Samoa guide. 30. Insects: afato, se, alisi lelefue.

Walking stick (se). These large green or brown insects can grow up to 5 inches long. They usually remain motionless and look like a branch or small twig, hoping that this camouflage will spare them from being eaten by a hungry Samoan starling (fuia). These slow-moving ‘sticks’ feed on leaves, most notably coconut fronds. Some can fly, although not very gracefully -- if one lands on a person, a local belief is that it is a messenger announcing that someone will be coming to visit you.

Katydid (alisi). Here’s the insect that makes all that noise at dusk. As the sun sets, katydids start the evening with a loud screechy chorus that lasts about 20 minutes. After a little warm-up noise, they synchronize with their neighbors so that all of them are screech screeching in unison. These are male katydids trying to attract females. The sound is produced as they rub special structures on their front wings, back and forth. Katydids are green, about 1.5 inches long, and look like a leaf. Just like the walking sticks, katydids hope their camouflage make them difficult to see. Katydids are related to crickets and grasshoppers and are sometimes called long-horned grasshoppers.

Hummingbird moth (lelefua). At dusk you might be surprised to see what looks like a hummingbird hovering in front of a flower, sipping its nectar. This is actually a thick-bodied moth with an extremely rapid wing beat and a long proboscis that it sticks down the flower tubes. This is a good example of convergent evolution, where two very different kinds of organisms (a bird and a moth) evolved a similar way to extract nectar out of long, delicate flowers. The moth is also known as the hawk or sphinx moth.

Giant longhorn beetle. These beetles are unusual for two reasons: they grow very large and people eat them. The adult beetle pictured here was almost 3 inches long from head to tail. What does it eat with those large powerful jaws? It lays its eggs in standing dead trees (particularly mamalava, tufaso, tavai) and after hatching, the larvae feed on the surrounding wood. These larvae (afato) grow very large and are collected and eaten in Samoa, Fiji and probably throughout the South Pacific. Two villages in Savai’i are particularly well known for harvesting many afato: Gataivai and Aopo. Afato are fed coconut shavings, and then they are often eaten with coconut cream, and they taste like …. coconut. But here in American Samoa, times are changing – one person said he had eaten afato in the past but now he prefers to eat a Big Mac.

Insects are an impressive group. They are extremely abundant and highly diverse (over 800,000 species worldwide), they inhabit almost every terrestrial and aquatic habitat imaginable, and they have been on earth long before the dinosaurs ever roamed. Over 2,500 species have been recorded in the Samoan Archipelago, with many more yet to be documented. Four large but somewhat secretive insects are featured here: