Praying Mantis Facts
The praying mantis is an insect that even those adverse to creepy crawlies must surely appreciate as a specimen of real beauty, and that’s a fact! The curious way it turns its head to look at you over its shoulders is quite unique amongst insects. The way the mantis’ front forelegs are held up together as if in prayer when resting gave rise to its name, with “mantis” deriving from the Greek for “prophet.” That’s just one of many interesting praying mantis facts.
The mantis is most common in the tropics, but they are also found in the United State and Europe. The Praying Mantis was actually introduced to the United States to help control pests, but it is now so common it is considered native. The species that was introduced was the European Mantis religiosa and the Chinese species Tenodera aridifolia sinensis.
Taxonomy
There are over 2000 species of mantids, classified by taxonomists as below:
- Kingdom, Animal
- Phylum, Arthropoda
- Class, Insecta
- Order, Dictyoptera
- Family, Mantidae
- Genus, Stagomantis
Some notable species include the Orchid Mantis (Hymenopus coronatus) which is the same pretty pink as an orchid, the Tenodera which is a full six inches in adulthood, and the tiny Bolbe pygmaea that grows to just one centimeter.
The term mantid refers to members of the order Mantodea, and the term Mantis refers to members of the genus Mantis within Mantodea. However, the terms mantis and mantids are used interchangeably, and the term praying mantis is often used by people referring to mantids.
Appearance
The full range of mantis size is from 2/5 of an inch to an imposing 12 inches. In terms of coloring you will see pink, green, and brown mantids, and everything in between as each mantis has developed to blend in with its environment and evade predators such as birds.
The praying mantis is the only insect capable of rotating its head by 180 degrees, and this combined with very keen eyesight are used to observe both predators and prey. Incredibly the mantis’ powerful vision extends over 50 feet. And as if this wasn’t enough they also have hearing abilities that exceed the upper limit of human hearing.
Some mantises have a hollow body, and it is speculated that this is useful in the detection of predators.
Praying Mantis Food
Watching your mantis feast on crickets and aphids you will soon realize that this animal is a voracious carnivore. When kept as pets they need to be housed separately or you will find their population rapidly dwindling.
Recommended food for young mantids is aphids or fruit flies, with the adults graduating to flies, butterflies and crickets. In the wild their diet is more varied with some species even eating small hummingbirds, frogs, lizards, and mice.
You will observe that the mantis makes use of the sharp spikes running along its front legs when it grasps its prey, and if you look carefully you will see a pretty sharp hook at the end of the leg which comes in handy when the mantis skewers the neck of its victims.
After you have put a couple of crickets in your mantis’s vivarium you will see the mantis become still as it goes into stealth mode ready to pluck the prey using its forelegs. The mantis will paralyze the crickets by biting their necks.
In addition to keeping your cannibalistic mantises separate another tip is not to introduce too much food into the vivarium at once as this can tire the mantis out.
