Well, most species of stick insects are 'parthenogenic' which means they can lay fertile eggs without the need of a male, the female 'clones' herself and all of the offspring will be female, there may, in rare cases, be a few males in that clutch.
If the eggs were fertilised by a male, you will get males and females.
The only downside of having eggs that are cloned is that they take a longer time to hatch, usually 1 year whereas the other eggs, 3-5 months.
When the babies hatch, they resemble tiny black ants, because the egg has a little edible cap on the end and in the wild, ants take the eggs back to the nest,eat only the cap, and discard the egg in the waste chamber of the nest, when the eggs hatch, they look act and smell like the ants so they can get away without being eaten.
Stick insects are harmless, But they do have cool defense mechanisms,
My species of stick insects (macleays spectre) have 5 defence tactics,
The first one is, when they are resting on a leaf or stick and its windy, they sway from side to side to imitate a leaf blowing in the wind.
The males give off an odour as a defence mechanism but to us it smells like maple syrup.
When the females are threatened, they will curl up theyr tails to imitate a scorpion!!
Also, the mature females have firm but not dangerous spikes, if she feels threatened she will press thwm against my hand (they tickle) lol
Also, sometimes, both male and female will play dead.
Stick insects eat bramble,oak,rose,eucalyptus and wattle leaves.
Though eucalyptus in the main diet.
If you feed them eucalyptus the stick insects will be light brown,
And if you feed them rose leaves, they will turn green!!!
Here is my youtube vid of my male stick insect oing his 'swaying' defence mechanism, i put music to it and it looks like he is dancing!!
YouTube - Broadcast Yourself.