Mammoth Monsters Invade New Zealand Gardens

Motel construction is invading the gardens of New Zealand: small wooden structures designed for very large insects called wētā.

There are between 70 and 100 species of wētā in New Zealand, and sixteen of them are endangered. The wētā motels are designed to attract the nocturnal creatures, so they must be dark in the daytime and with an entrance big enough for a wētā, but small enough to prevent ingress by, say, a mouse. That’s no small trick since the wētā can grow almost to the size of a mouse.

The wētā motels (also called hotels or condos) were originally a research aid devised by Massey University ecologist and wētā specialist Steve Trewick in the early 1990s. (He’s got a tree wētā, the Hemideina trewicki, named after him.) In 2016 Steve Rawson of Swiss Wood Technicians began making wētā hotels for the Department of Conservation, and in 2018 started selling them to the public. They’re moving like hotcakes.

“We’ve noticed a real increase in sales, especially in the Wellington area,” Rawson told the Guardian. “Before that, I think a lot of people would look at wētā and think ‘Yuck, I don’t want to go near them’, but they are actually amazing creatures and they are not that horrifying at all.”

In fact they are illuminating. People see “that there is much more to the biology of our planet than they would otherwise see,” says Trewick. “Most New Zealand biology is out and about at night. It’s a window on the world.”

How to make a wētā motel: www.youtube.com/watch?v=9408Fx1ohiw&t=1s.

Photo credit: Herb Christophers & Steve Trewick / NZ Department of Conservation