Praying Mantis
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40 free Praying Mantis trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The praying mantis looks calm, even pious, yet it is one of the most efficient ambush hunters in the insect world. Almost everything about it is odd: the way it sees, the way it hears, the way it courts, and the lengths it goes to in order to stay hidden. This quiz turns the best praying mantis fun facts into questions. It covers anatomy and senses, hunting and diet, the life cycle from egg case to adult, famous disguises and threat displays, a few standout species, and the insect's appearances in film, art, martial arts and folklore. It is pitched for curious readers of any age: people who have found one on a fence, students working on an insect project, and anyone who wants a surprising fact to share.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What do female praying mantises sometimes do to their partners during mating, in about a quarter of wild encounters?
Eat them
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.
Q 02The word mantis, borrowed from Ancient Greek, originally carried which meaning that suits the insect's solemn pose?
Prophet
Prophet is what the Greek mántis means. The Greeks credited the insect with the power to show lost travellers the way home.
Q 03Praying mantises resemble stick insects, but which household insects are among their closest living relatives?
Cockroaches
Cockroaches and termites share the superorder Dictyoptera with mantises. Mantises are thought to have evolved from roach-like ancestors.
Q 04Newcastle University researchers fitted praying mantises with tiny versions of what to test their depth vision?
3D glasses
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.
Q 05Most praying mantises have a single ear, so scientists call the insect an auditory version of which mythical creature?
Cyclops
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.
Q 06Chinese mantises mostly eat large insects, yet adult females have been seen feeding on which birds?
Hummingbirds
Hummingbirds are among the small vertebrates that big mantises catch. Lizards, frogs and even fish have ended up as mantis meals too.
Q 07Hymenopus coronatus, a pink-and-white praying mantis with petal-shaped legs, is named after which flower?
Orchid
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.
Q 08Which comic actor voices Master Mantis, one of the Furious Five, in the animated film Kung Fu Panda?
Seth Rogen
Seth Rogen plays the dry-humoured Mantis. Each of the Furious Five honours a real Chinese fighting style, his being Praying Mantis kung fu.
Q 09A courting male European mantis freezes whenever the female moves, as mantises barely see objects that are what?
Motionless
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.
Q 10Which body part can a praying mantis swivel roughly 180 degrees, letting it scan for prey while its body stays put?
Its head
Its head turns on a remarkably flexible neck joint. A waiting mantis can therefore track passing prey without giving itself away.
Q 11Young praying mantises hatch looking like tiny wingless adults and are known by which name?
Nymphs
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.
Q 12What is the name of the frothy egg case a female praying mantis produces, which hardens into a protective capsule?
Ootheca
Ootheca combines Greek words for egg and container. Depending on the species, one can shelter anywhere from 10 to 400 eggs.
Q 13Shops sell praying mantis egg cases to people who hope the hatchlings will do what in their yards?
Eat garden pests
Eat garden pests they do, but mantises grab beneficial insects just as readily. Experts rate their value as a biological control as negligible.
Q 21Mantidflies are unrelated to praying mantises yet have the same grasping front legs, an example of which process?
Convergent evolution
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.
Q 22Every Brunner's stick mantis is female and lays fertile eggs without mating, a strategy known by which name?
Parthenogenesis
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.
Q 23When threatened, adult female ghost mantises resort to which defensive trick, known to biologists as thanatosis?
Playing dead
Q 14The newly hatched young of many praying mantis species deter predators by looking like which other insects?
Ants
Ants are avoided by many predators, so resembling one is good protection. Several kinds of mantis refuse to attack ants themselves.
Q 15Fossil praying mantises from the age of dinosaurs, mostly juveniles, have been found preserved in which material?
Amber
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.
Q 16Which New England state made the European mantis its official state insect, although the species is not native there?
Connecticut
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.
Q 17In the 1957 monster film The Deadly Mantis, the giant insect is shown climbing which American landmark?
The Washington Monument
The Washington Monument scene used footage of a real mantis. For other shots the crew built a massive papier-mâché model fitted with hydraulics.
Q 18Kamacuras, praying mantises enlarged by a radioactive storm, dig up an egg and then battle which Japanese movie monster?
Godzilla
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.
Q 19Gongylus gongylodes, a slender praying mantis of India and Sri Lanka, is commonly named after which musical instrument?
Violin
Violin mantises are unusually peaceful. They can live and breed in large groups without making meals of one another.
Q 20Which term, shared with birds of prey, describes the spiked grasping front legs of a praying mantis?
Raptorial
Raptorial legs snap shut on prey in a strike lasting only milliseconds. Rows of interlocking spines then make escape nearly impossible.
Playing dead suits an African insect shaped like a withered leaf. Adult males of the species prefer to run or fly away.
Q 24For which African people does the shape-shifting trickster god ǀKaggen most often appear as a praying mantis?
The San
The San tell how ǀKaggen created the eland, his favourite animal. He can also become a snake, a louse or a caterpillar.
Q 25Which Dutch artist's print Dream shows a human-sized praying mantis perched on a sleeping bishop?
M. C. Escher
M. C. Escher sketched grasshoppers and mantises from life. Insects turn up again and again in his later prints.
Q 26In Gerald Durrell's My Family and Other Animals, a praying mantis called Cicely battles which rival across a ceiling?
A gecko
A gecko named Geronimo takes Cicely on in an almost evenly matched fight that fills four pages of the 1956 memoir.
Q 27Which naturalist first described the European mantis for science in 1758, under the name Gryllus religiosus?
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus could not have guessed how far it would travel. The species now lives across much of North America, where people introduced it.
Q 28Some African and Australian praying mantises turn black after a molt late in the dry season to blend in with what?
Burnt ground
Burnt ground is everywhere by then, because bush fires sweep through at that time of year. Biologists call the colour change fire melanism.
Q 29Praying mantises and stick insects often rock gently from side to side, which may help them resemble what?
Plants in the wind
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.
Q 30As part of a bluffing threat display, some praying mantises make which sound by forcing air out of their abdomens?
A hiss
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.