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Thread: What you learned from observing a real mantis

  1. #1
    Stacey Guest

    What you learned from observing a real mantis

    Heres what I learned.

    1. They sit around all day doing nothing
    2. If a bug walks past them and they don't care.
    3. Thy climb up to the top of things and stay there.
    4. Every so often they grab something and if they bug kicks at them, they eat its foot and continue chewing.
    5. I once put a hornet inside my mantis cage. The mantis just waited untill the hornet was under her and then beat it up. I'm not kidding, both hooks went out but folded because it was annoyed. It let the crippled hornet walk a few steps away and die and never ate it.
    6. They don't eat ants.
    7. They eat their brothers and sisters.
    8. They are frighteningly fast, I was scared to hold one, but then I tried to and it circled my arm up to my shoulder and looked into my eyes with its black eyed alien stare, It did this faster than I could blink.
    9. Mantis' seak to get fat and don't move too much. Then they lay eggs and die.
    10. Vs a cicaida it just grabbed it, spun it around and ate from the back of its head, quick kill.
    11. If you poke them they put their guard up and lean with the push, bobbing in their horse stance and then walk where you are pushing them. Somtimes they will hook the stick and poke with the other. If the are really ****ed they get your finger.

    They really arent too exiting. How long did wang long stare at those things to learn anything.

    If you put egg cases in your back yard, birds will eat them, you can't stop this. If they do succeed, you will never find them in your yard.

    What have you guys learned?

  2. #2
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    stacey

    i had similar experiences, i once killed one by putting a roach in the cage! i guess it had raid on it or something. i did learn something though. i noticed that thier are a large variety of them. one in partcular was brown, no more than an inch and half long and had flaky skin which resembled the tree bark identically that it was on. it tended to cower and depend on it's camo instead of attacking/defending my twig.

  3. #3
    I have had a few in my school to play with , but its just like anything...... they know when they are in captivity and wont react the same when on display as they would in the wild. Also I think that they wont become firece if they are not in danger, or protecting their eggs or territiory. I also know that the females are much more aggressive than the males. As flem stated I remember my teacher told me about mantises in china that grow to about 10'' tall and much more aggressive than the species in north america. So i would guess to truley see them in action you need to be in their natural habitat.
    http://www.kungfuUSA.net

  4. #4
    Join Date
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    Rochester NY
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    Caught in the act...

    Stacey,
    There was a pretty interesting show on Discovery Channel a few Months back called "Alien Insect-Praying Mantis". They talked alot about the diffferent species of Mantis, and how they were all similar but different. Anyway, the hightlight of the show was some never before caught on camera footage of Praying Mantis catching a Bird, Mouse, and a battle with a 10" snake. According to the show, the largest mantis (about 6") is capable of kiling up to a 10" snake.
    Anyway, if you get a chance watch it. Perhaps Wong Long witnessed a few battles like these....

  5. #5
    Join Date
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    Tainan Taiwan
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    Mantis kills a bird

    One source of Wang Lang's history says the mantis killed a bird not a cicada.
    Now, I no longer doubt it is possible.
    I'll go and get that Discovery VCD this week.

  6. #6
    If anyone knows how to get a copy of that Discovery show on mantises, please post the info here!

    Thanks.

  7. #7
    Join Date
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    Leics, Leicestershire, UK
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    It realt depends on the variety of mantis. The bog-standard american Mantis (Mantidosa Carolina) is really quite pathetic. If you want to see real insectoid action, get the original thing The Chinese Mantis (Tendosa Sinensis) - these babies grow anything up to 8 inches long!
    Bird? Shmird! These guys could take out a 747 with no effort.
    "Cry shamefully and let loose the turnips of war!"

  8. #8
    Join Date
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    Location
    Rochester NY
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    Tainan Mantis

    If you are unable to get a copy of it, e-mail me directly.

  9. #9
    I saw a mantis get eaten whole by a little lizard. And you guys are telling me a mantis killed a bird. I saw a mantis kill a lion and a tiger both at the same time. Was the bird a newborn?

  10. #10

    yingching

    yingching, I tried to email you to ask for info on the discovery video, but your email is blocked on the site.

    How can I get in touch with you?

    Thanks.

  11. #11
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    Syre

    You can e-mail me at- RochesterKungFu@AOL.com

  12. #12
    Join Date
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    Leics, Leicestershire, UK
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    Tao Yin - what kind of mantis was it? How old was it? What size lizard was it?
    Just as in the world of Martial Arts don't judge the whole on one thing that you see. Just because you see a taekwondo yellow belt fumbling through his forms, don't go thinking you can go and whup the a$$ of some Jeet Kune Do black sash.
    No offence intended, mate.
    Peace.
    "Cry shamefully and let loose the turnips of war!"

  13. #13
    Join Date
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    mantis vs bird

    what mantis can beat a bird, i would love to see this happen?

    what type of bird was the mantis fighting exitus?

  14. #14
    Although I have never seen the documentary It would not be hard to imagine a mantis hanging on a flower as a hummingbird came to eat nectar and the mantis snatching the bird up in thier forelegs....Just a thought..
    http://www.kungfuUSA.net

  15. #15
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    ttt for 2018!

    Praying Mantis Seen Hunting Fish for the First Time
    The ravenous insect repeatedly returned to the hunting site, suggesting praying mantises may be capable of complex learning


    R.I.P., guppy. (Rajesh Puttaswamaiah)
    By Brigit Katz
    SMITHSONIAN.COM
    SEPTEMBER 21, 2018

    One night in March of last year, a praying mantis crept onto a rooftop garden in India and perched on an artificial pond, waiting intently. When an unsuspecting guppy swam by, the insect snatched it up and gobbled it down—marking the first time that a praying mantis has been observed fishing for its food in the wild, reports Jake Buehler of National Geographic.

    The unusual scene was observed by the conservationist Rajesh Puttaswamaiah, who witnessed the male giant Asian mantis (Hierodula tenuidentata) return to the rooftop garden on five consecutive nights. The stealthy critter would hang out on water lilies or water cabbage leaves until a guppy got close enough to grab. It ate up to two fish during each hunting session, and managed to catch a total of nine guppies. After the fifth night, the mantis stopped paying visits to the garden.

    Puttaswamaiah, conservationist Nayak Manjunath and Roberto Battiston, an entomologist at Italy’s Musei del Canal di Brenta, describe this unprecedented hunting behavior in the Journal of Orthoptera Research. Mantids, they note in their new report, have been known to feast on small vertebrates like lizards, mice, snakes and turtles, but these encounters often take place in cages or as the result of other types of human interference. More typically, mantids will eat insects, especially fly-like ones.

    Research has shown, however, that praying mantises can be crafty and aggressive hunters. A 2017 study found that praying mantises around the world are able to catch and eat small birds, most of them fast-moving hummingbirds. But even though the insects appear willing to chow down on most things they can grab, Puttaswamaiah and his co-authors were surprised that the rooftop praying mantis could see well enough to catch fish in the dark.

    The structure of praying mantises eyes “clearly indicates that they have evolved to prey in daylight,” the researchers explain in a press release, yet the mantis described in the study always hunted at sunset or later. That the insect was able to see its prey in water, which presents another “visual barrier,” Battiston tells Buehler, is even more surprising. But he has a theory about how the mantis managed to catch the guppies.

    “[A] mantid’s eye doesn’t work like ours,” he says. “They see movements better than shapes or colors. The [guppies] have a large tail they move like a flag while swimming, and it may have resembled to the mantid a strange bug scampering around.”

    The guppy-gulping mantis also suggests that the insects may be capable of complex learning. The rooftop garden was full of many tasty insects for the critter to eat, but it chose to return, night after night, to the same hunting spot.

    “This behavior sounds very much like a precise hunting strategy—not random choices,” Battiston tells Mindy Weisberger of Live Science.

    Like many predators, praying mantises are capable of aversive learning, or learning from negative experiences; a recent study showed that the insects figure out to avoid prey that has been made artificially bitter. The rooftop mantis, according to the study authors, “suggests a further step to a more articulated cognitive process”: the ability to consider various environmental cues—the prey’s abundance at a particular site, their ease of capture, their nutritional value—and formulate new hunting strategies.

    Of course, the researchers’ theories are based on the behavior of a single praying mantis, and further investigations are needed before any new conclusions about the insect’s hunting and cognitive abilities can be made. But the possible implications of the critter’s late-night snack fest is, at the very least, interesting food for thought.
    I've heard of mantids killing birds before, but fishing is new to me.
    Gene Ching
    Publisher www.KungFuMagazine.com
    Author of Shaolin Trips
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