This particular species is moderately large but is outstanding in colour patterns and is unique to the rocky bluffs on the eastern side of the Southern Alps.

This species of wētā is moderately large, long-legged and steel grey with distinctive red, black and white banded femora.

Black antenna, 2.5 times the total body length, extrude from the striped greyish brown head capsule.

The juvenile wētā are largely black with white spines and leg joints, and as they mature, they assume their dark brown, red and grey pigmentation.

This species of wētā is moderately large, steel grey, and long shaped with distinctive red, black banded femora with slender hind tibiae with 7 or 8 fixed spines along with a single articulated distal spine in the inner row.

Thorax: Prosternum that has two moderate blunt spines; meso-and metasternum considerably wide, but do not have distinct lateral lobes.

Abdomen: Tergites are smooth and almost shiny with feeble transverse striae, in centre, tan brown with pale grey edges, with no trace of a mid-dorsal ridge.

[1] There are two areas in New Zealand where the bluff wētā are found: in the Kaikōura region, both the seaward and inland ranges, and at Mt Somers, in South Canterbury.

[2] Thanks to its long legs, Deinacrida elegans is a great rock climber and is found on vertical rocky bluffs, inside dark narrow crevasses and occasionally under dense overhanging plants.

Their preferred habitat conditions are clean, dry, horizontal cavities about 800 and 1800m above sea level which allow the wētā to lodge themselves in as far from light as possible.

[3][4] The difference in this species compared to others in New Zealand and the way they have evolved in the South Island was most likely in response to habitat diversification associated with Pliocene mountain building.

Bluff wētā chose to stay deep inside their dens (in the rock) during winter and the colder months, and during snow events, to conserve body heat.

April and May are known as the favourite times, because this is when the hard summer soil is softened by the autumn rains, so the eggs can be laid more easily.

[8] When the wētā is at the nymph stage, after it emerges, it will look for a dark place to allow time for its white-rose coloured exoskeleton to become hardened and pigmented.

Deinacrida elegans feed predominantly on the leaves of trees and shrubs, but the evolutionary process is not well understood.

However, if supplied with a freshly killed grasshopper or even another wētā, they will quite happily change from the vegetable diet and eat these insects.

Although they are somewhat protected by the landscape they inhabit, with many places to hide within the shrubs and steep, rocky cliffs, if there is a rapid increase in rodent populations, predator control may need to be considered.

Prior to the arrival of human introduced predators, wētā were hunted by tuatara, lizards, short-tailed bats and birds.

The wētā plays a large part in this, taking on the niche of a forest floor mammal (such as a mouse) in New Zealand.

[11] This has resulted in wētā undergoing gigantism, a process in which an isolated population grows larger than its relatives due to a lack of predators and/or an abundant food source.