Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Unknown, VINTAGE AUSTRALIAN SPIDER SCIENTIFIC ILLUSTRATIONS
#00 . . .YEAR ONE
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
MANTIS RELIGIOSA is a large insect from the family Mantidae, which themselves are the largest family of the order Mantodea. Better known by their common name, the praying mantis, these animals are most easily recognisable by the pose they assume at rest: one of prayer, or worship.
Or, perhaps, by the way that the female of the species tends to rip the heads off the males after sex.
There's an explanation for this phenomenon, don't worry: although male mantises are active, agile, their female counterparts are superior in strength. And with this strength, most female mantises attempt to kill males on sight.
So they must find another way to approach.
It's a game of trickery, really, and so many words can be used to describe it: careful, calculated, cowardly. Since the mere sight of a male is enough to provoke a female, the former must move when the latter isn't looking—so that's what he does. Utilising the fovea in his compound eyes—which face directly forwards, allowing the insect to view his prospective partner in accurate detail—he draws closer when the female isn't looking, stopping then starting again when necessary.
This process, predator-like, can take up to several hours. Scientists do not call it a courtship, because it is not: the word, courtship, suggests the female is receptive to the male's advances. Considering she almost always attempts to kill him afterwards, you can assume she is not.
When the male is close enough to the female, he opens his wings to aid the jump he makes onto the female's back. Once he lands, he uses his raptorial legs to hold onto her; once he is secure, copulation begins; and once when he is done, he makes a run for it, covering a distance of about fifty centimetres for his own safety.
There are a variety of prey that the mantis favour while hunting, other than their own kind: crickets, cockroaches, centipedes, anything that can be trapped between the small spikes on a mantis' femora and tibiae. Lizards, too—Spencer Sato has seen it on YouTube, videos of smaller reptiles who seek larger insects like the mantis for a snack, only to find their prey wants to play a different part today, that of the predator. Spencer Sato has seen it, as the mantis wrestles with its opponent, struggling for a moment before locking its neck in its forelegs. Spencer Sato has seen it, as the underdog mantis holds the lizard's jaw open then strikes, sinking its mandibles into flesh, pink and vulnerable, and delivers the death bite.
