Praying mantises have a distinct feature of bulbous eyes placed on a triangular shaped head. Mantises have long bodies and an elongated thorax that looks like a neck. The front two legs of the mantis are bent and held at an angle that makes the mantis look like it’s praying. The praying mantis female is larger than the male and it’s not uncommon for females to eat the males in mating. About a quarter of the time the female eats the male after, or even during, mating. In the wild there are often complicated courtship dances the male performs to make it less likely he’ll be eaten. While mating, the male goes behind the female, attaches himself to her, and deposits his sperm at the end of her abdomen. Sometimes the male may wait on the female's abdomen for longer after copulation to avoid getting eaten by a hungry female. It’s more often that a female with a bad diet will eat the male than a well fed female. After copulation, the female will lay 100-400 eggs in a frothy liquid produced in her abdomen on a flat surface, on a plant, and sometimes even burrowed underground. The froth hardens into an incasing that protects the eggs called an ootheca. Species of mantises that live in termperate climates die after laying eggs in autumn. Once the eggs hatch into mini mantises, sometimes they will try to eat each other before going off to eat smaller prey.

As you can already see, praying mantises are general predators and cannibalistic at times, sometimes even adults eat the nymphs. The reason the mantis’s prey are praying (as I said they were in the title) is because the praying mantis is a very good hunter. They are mostly ambush predators who wait for their prey. One thing that allows them to do this is their good eyesight. Compared to most vertebrates, the mantis has great eyesight. In their five eyes (two big and three small ones in between) they can have up to 10,000 ommatidia, each ommatidia captures one small picture and together they make up a whole image. Their necks can also turn up to almost 180 degrees, allowing them to see a wide range. Praying mantises have the ability to have 3D vision, their amazing depth perception is studied by scientists. Their second asset is the mantises forelegs and quick reflexes. Their legs are long and they come with spikes to pierce any prey, in fact, mantises have been known to eat birds and even fish. Whenever their prey moves, the spikes on the forelegs just go deeper into them. The mantis doesn’t even wait for prey to die, the mantis eats prey the moment they catch them.

The mantis also has some defensive moves, well not really. When the mantis feels threatened, it raises its forelegs and wings (not all species have wings) to make itself look bigger. Some wings have patterns on them which send a warning to predators. Mantises are very brave and they stand up to animals that are bigger than they are, because of this, they are often symbols for courage and bravery in human culture.

The praying mantis is on almost every continent and they have over 2,400 recognized species of mantises. Perhaps the main reason why they have been so able to survive in different situations is their ability to blend in. The stick mantises look like twigs from a tree, the leaf mantis looks like a leaf, and ghost mantises look like collard greens. They even sway in the wind to mimic leafs or plants swaying. The ant mantises use their appearance to avoid predators as ants often have strong defences (they attack in numbers and they have chemical defences) and they taste bad, so predators are usually uninterested in them. The most beautiful mantises are flower mantises, the orchid mantis is especially pretty. They are mostly white but they have highlights of pink and a tinge of green. They hide on the insides of flowers and wait for prey. Many bees come wanting to get pollen and they willingly come very close to the mantises. This is called aggressive mimicry and it pays off well.







The mantis is decent for killing problematic garden bugs. However, they are general predators and kill helpful bugs too. They also don’t reproduce fast enough to account for a growing need in pest control. Mantises are often kept as pets because they are easy to take care of, as they can be in many climates and they clean themselves. The praying mantis has also had a lot of influence over humans. They have inspired two separate martial art forms developed in China, they were thought to have supernatural powers by Ancient Greece and Egypt, and they were revered by the southern African Khoi and San and were named as a god in the Khoi culture, partly because of its praying position.

So, the Mantises may be praying, but so are their prey. This is the last article in my bug series (for a while, maybe not forever) and I hope you join me in learning about new subjects.