The remnants of a massive volcano, Ball’s Pyramid juts 1,843 feet out of the Pacific Ocean. It’s one of the surviving above-ground remnants of the once-lost (and recently found) sunken continent of Zealandia. Ball’s Pyramid lies about 23 kilometers east of Lord Howe Island. It rises some 550 meters out of the water and measures about 1,100 meters (3,600 feet) in length and 300 meters (980 feet) across that makes it the tallest volcanic stack in the world. This rocky formation is visible from Mount Gower Track on Lord Howe Island.

Discovered in 1788 by Royal Navy Lieutenant Henry Lidgbird Ball, hence the name, the barren, rocky spire was thought to be devoid of life until 2001 when a group of scientists discovered what may be the world’s rarest insect. 

The Lord Howe Island stick insect (Dryococelus australis) had not been seen alive in over 70 years. Known as “land lobsters” or “walking sausages,” the six-inch-long insects were once common on the neighboring Lord Howe Island, but were assumed to have been eaten into extinction by the black rats introduced to the island when a supply ship ran aground on its shores in 1918.

Yet in 2001, the scientists found a colony of the huge Lord Howe Island stick insects living under a single bush, a hundred feet up the otherwise entirely infertile rock. Somehow a few of the wingless insects escaped and managed, by means still unknown, to traverse over 14 miles of open ocean, land on Ball’s Pyramid, and survive there. Just 27 of the insects have been found on the rocky spire. They are currently being bred in captivity.