The exclusive home of Melbourne Zoo's newest resident sounds a bit like a reality TV star's pad.
The every move of Vanessa, a critically endangered Lord Howe Island stick insect, is monitored by camera in a climate-controlled $100,000 glasshouse built just for her at the Parkville zoo.
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Meet Vanessa, the world's rarest insect
Vanessa might the the world's only the stick insect with a $100,000 glasshouse.
It has under-floor heating, automated vents, evaporative cooling and a steam humidifier. Vanessa, who is 12 centimetres long, is fed from a tea tree species – Melaleuca howeana – grown just for her.
The zoo's invertebrate co-ordinator, Kate Pearce, says Vanessa is fussy with her food. If the leaves are not nice and juicy, new ones are fetched for her.
Unlike Kim Kardashian, Vanessa's frass (poo) is monitored to ensure she is expelling 25 to 30 pellets a day.
Like Ms Kardashian, Vanessa's pregnancies are eagerly awaited. Vanessa is expected to welcome 112 offspring from eggs she has laid in the next month
She is named after Newcastle surgeon and keen rock climber Dr Vanessa Wills, who caught her at night, using head torches, after abseiling down the isolated rock outcrop Balls Pyramid, 20 kilometres from Lord Howe Island.
Vanessa (the stick insect, not the doctor) was taken by boat to Lord Howe Island, 600 kilometres east of Port Macquarie, NSW, and then escorted on three flights to Melbourne, where she will be queen of an important breeding program.
Her house was revealed on Thursday, National Threatened Species Day.
Rats that escaped a shipwreck of trading vessel SS Makambo in 1918 wiped out the species on Lord Howe Island and it was thought extinct for almost 80 years.
But a colony was discovered on Balls Pyramid in 2001 and a pair dubbed Adam and Eve were brought to Melbourne Zoo in 2003 for breeding. So far 14,350 individuals have been born at the zoo.
The species is still critically endangered and although captive colonies exist in San Diego, Bristol and Lord Howe Island, only 17 of the animals have been recorded in the wild on Balls Pyramid. A rat eradication program that would allow their release on Lord Howe has yet to begin.
Ms Pearce said Vanessa could have fallen pregnant from mating on Balls Pyramid but also could have produced the eggs parthogenetically – without male assistance.
In future Vanessa might get a boyfriend, her own Kanye West, from among the males in the zoo's existing population of about 600, which are descended from Adam and Eve, to provide vital new genetic input. Hence the pampering.
"But we have to make sure that she's disease free and he's disease free," Ms Pearce said.