40 Fun Facts About Praying Mantis

What do female praying mantises sometimes do to their partners during mating, in about a quarter of wild encounters?

Female mantises eat them in about a quarter of encounters seen in the wild. Poorly fed females are the likeliest to turn a suitor into a meal.

The word mantis, borrowed from Ancient Greek, originally carried which meaning that suits the insect's solemn pose?

Prophet is what the Greek mántis means. The Greeks credited the insect with the power to show lost travellers the way home.

Praying mantises resemble stick insects, but which household insects are among their closest living relatives?

Cockroaches and termites share the superorder Dictyoptera with mantises. Mantises are thought to have evolved from roach-like ancestors.

Newcastle University researchers fitted praying mantises with tiny versions of what to test their depth vision?

3D glasses, stuck on with beeswax, let the team screen films in an insect cinema. Because red is hard for mantises to see, the lenses were green and blue.

Most praying mantises have a single ear, so scientists call the insect an auditory version of which mythical creature?

Cyclops fits because the ear is one organ on the midline of the body. It hears only high-pitched sound, such as the calls of hunting bats.

Chinese mantises mostly eat large insects, yet adult females have been seen feeding on which birds?

Hummingbirds are among the small vertebrates that big mantises catch. Lizards, frogs and even fish have ended up as mantis meals too.

Hymenopus coronatus, a pink-and-white praying mantis with petal-shaped legs, is named after which flower?

Orchid mantises are such good fakes that a study found they draw in more insects than real blooms do. They live in the tropical forests of Southeast Asia.

Which comic actor voices Master Mantis, one of the Furious Five, in the animated film Kung Fu Panda?

Seth Rogen plays the dry-humoured Mantis. Each of the Furious Five honours a real Chinese fighting style, his being Praying Mantis kung fu.

A courting male European mantis freezes whenever the female moves, as mantises barely see objects that are what?

Motionless objects almost vanish for a mantis, whose eyes are tuned to movement. A wary suitor's stop-and-go stalk can last several hours.

Which body part can a praying mantis swivel roughly 180 degrees, letting it scan for prey while its body stays put?

Its head turns on a remarkably flexible neck joint. A waiting mantis can therefore track passing prey without giving itself away.

Young praying mantises hatch looking like tiny wingless adults and are known by which name?

Nymphs grow by shedding their skin five to ten times, with no pupa stage in between. Only after the final shed do most species gain wings.

What is the name of the frothy egg case a female praying mantis produces, which hardens into a protective capsule?

Ootheca combines Greek words for egg and container. Depending on the species, one can shelter anywhere from 10 to 400 eggs.

Shops sell praying mantis egg cases to people who hope the hatchlings will do what in their yards?

Eat garden pests they do, but mantises grab beneficial insects just as readily. Experts rate their value as a biological control as negligible.

The newly hatched young of many praying mantis species deter predators by looking like which other insects?

Ants are avoided by many predators, so resembling one is good protection. Several kinds of mantis refuse to attack ants themselves.

Fossil praying mantises from the age of dinosaurs, mostly juveniles, have been found preserved in which material?

Amber has kept details as fine as the spines on a mantis's front legs. One fossil from Japan shows spines like those of mantises alive today.

Which New England state made the European mantis its official state insect, although the species is not native there?

Connecticut chose it in 1977 as a reminder of nature's value to farmers. The state's own guide admits the insect probably does little to protect crops.

In the 1957 monster film The Deadly Mantis, the giant insect is shown climbing which American landmark?

The Washington Monument scene used footage of a real mantis. For other shots the crew built a massive papier-mâché model fitted with hydraulics.

Kamacuras, praying mantises enlarged by a radioactive storm, dig up an egg and then battle which Japanese movie monster?

Godzilla kills two of the Kamacuras in the 1967 film Son of Godzilla. He was rushing to defend Minilla, the infant that hatched from the egg.

Gongylus gongylodes, a slender praying mantis of India and Sri Lanka, is commonly named after which musical instrument?

Violin mantises are unusually peaceful. They can live and breed in large groups without making meals of one another.

Which term, shared with birds of prey, describes the spiked grasping front legs of a praying mantis?

Raptorial legs snap shut on prey in a strike lasting only milliseconds. Rows of interlocking spines then make escape nearly impossible.

Mantidflies are unrelated to praying mantises yet have the same grasping front legs, an example of which process?

Convergent evolution gave both hunters the same spiny snap-trap. Mantidflies belong with the lacewings, and many of their larvae grow up feeding on spider eggs.

Every Brunner's stick mantis is female and lays fertile eggs without mating, a strategy known by which name?

Parthenogenesis is the only way this species breeds, since no male has ever been found. Its young all leave the egg case through a single pointed exit.

When threatened, adult female ghost mantises resort to which defensive trick, known to biologists as thanatosis?

Playing dead suits an African insect shaped like a withered leaf. Adult males of the species prefer to run or fly away.

For which African people does the shape-shifting trickster god ǀKaggen most often appear as a praying mantis?

The San tell how ǀKaggen created the eland, his favourite animal. He can also become a snake, a louse or a caterpillar.

Which Dutch artist's print Dream shows a human-sized praying mantis perched on a sleeping bishop?

M. C. Escher sketched grasshoppers and mantises from life. Insects turn up again and again in his later prints.

In Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, a praying mantis called Cicely battles which rival across a ceiling?

A gecko named Geronimo takes Cicely on in an almost evenly matched fight that fills four pages of the 1956 memoir.

Which naturalist first described the European mantis for science in 1758, under the name Gryllus religiosus?

Carl Linnaeus could not have guessed how far it would travel. The species now lives across much of North America, where people introduced it.

Some African and Australian praying mantises turn black after a molt late in the dry season to blend in with what?

Burnt ground is everywhere by then, because bush fires sweep through at that time of year. Biologists call the colour change fire melanism.

Praying mantises and stick insects often rock gently from side to side, which may help them resemble what?

Plants in the wind are one reading of the dance. Another is that rocking helps a mantis pick objects out from the background by how they shift.

As part of a bluffing threat display, some praying mantises make which sound by forcing air out of their abdomens?

A hiss adds to the show of spread wings and raised front legs. It is all theatre, since mantises have no chemical defences to back it up.

Chinese mantises live longer, grow faster and produce more young when they supplement their insect diet with what?

Pollen makes these famous predators part-time vegetarians. They can also stockpile meals, as the foregut of some mantises runs the whole length of the body.

In temperate climates, praying mantises typically mate at which time of year, not long before the adults die off?

Autumn mating leaves the eggs to sit out the cold in their hardened cases. They hatch the following spring, long after the parents are gone.

Two Chinese martial arts based on the movements of the praying mantis are told apart by which pair of labels?

Northern and Southern Praying Mantis grew up separately. The first is traced to Shandong province, while the second was developed by the Hakka people.

Flower mantises lure prey by looking like blossoms, a hunting disguise biologists describe as which kind of mimicry?

Aggressive mimics are wolves in sheep's clothing. Their disguise draws victims closer instead of warning enemies away.

When a night-flying praying mantis hears a bat closing in, which escape manoeuvre does it typically perform?

A spiral dive begins as soon as the bat's calls speed up. The plunge toward safety often opens with a mid-air loop or spin.

The Chinese mantis, now North America's largest, arrived by accident in 1896 at a nursery in which city?

Philadelphia's Mount Airy neighbourhood was the entry point. The species has spread widely since, and its egg cases are now sold across the US and Canada.

What is the name for the dark spot that seems to follow an observer across a praying mantis's compound eye?

The pseudopupil is an illusion. Facets seen straight on absorb light and look black, while those off to the side reflect it.

Besides two bulging compound eyes, a praying mantis has three small simple eyes known by which name?

Ocelli sense only light and motion, leaving sharp vision to the big compound eyes. In the European mantis the trio is more pronounced in males than in females.

In early Chinese poetry noted by the ancient dictionary Erya, the praying mantis stands for which quality?

Courage and fearlessness were its poetic traits. By 1108 a Chinese medical text was describing mantis egg cases and the life cycle in accurate detail.

In the early 1900s, people in the Ozarks region of the United States called praying mantises by which nickname?

Devil's horses was the Ozark name, set down by the folklorist Vance Randolph in his book on the magic and folklore of the hills.