Strange looking insects aren't they but, somehow, very elegant too? :-D Our insects all appear rather drab compared to yours.
Amazing looking insects indeed. Did you know that in captivity the female attacks and eats the male after mating
mantis This is the first one I've seen here this season. I was pushing the wheelbarrow (full of bags of top soil) and brushed up against this critter sitting in a tree. I grabbed my daughter's "bug-looker" (plastic bug-observation device) and captured it. I showed it to my daughter & her 2 visiting friends, then we let it out on this oleander. I took several pictures. Last weekend, we were in suburban North Dallas for my niece's birthday & stayed with friends. Our friends have a swimming pool & at night, several mantises ended up in the water. I fished them out and the kids were fascinated by them. As for interesting-looking insects, eileen - you ought to see these eat. They eat their prey alive, grasping them in those huge pincers on their forelegs. Do you not have mantises in Britain? As for killing the males, ain't that what the females of virtually all species do? In humans, it's slower, but it still holds true, right?
Very strange looking creatures. I'm kind of glad we don't have them... As for killing their mate, so do female spiders if he plays off-tune on her net.
Nice photo. I have seen a lot of them lately here. Yesterday I picked one up to move it away from where we were working so it would'nt get harmed and the sucker bit me. I did not know they bite. I have never been bitten by one before. Never occured to me to take a picture of it.
This summer while I was looking for ripe squash I saw something move out of the corner of my eye. I got to looking and it was a baby mantis. Then I started to see more. There was about a dozen all about 1 inch long.
We don't have anything like mantis's over here in Scotland WT - worst luck. The nearest I've ever been to one is watching them on a TV programme. If we did then I'd be out in the garden even more often than I am now watching their every move!!! Our female spiders tend to eat the males after mating, if they don't move away quickly enough, but I've never actually witnessed it happening.
