The Martial Mantis

The opponent fixes the hero with a beady-eyed stare. The hero stares back, eyes unblinking, arms flexed and high, wrists bent. The opponent makes a move and the hero strikes! Grab! Control! Slash! Stab! The opponent is finished!

Martial arts, you say? Has gardening suddenly gotten more exciting than I'd planned?

No, it's only the bug that inspired a fighting style for both Northern and Southern Shaolin Kung Fu, invented (so it's said) by a frustrated student who was having a hard time overcoming a larger opponent. His observations of the insect's tactics led to a new "branch" of Kung Fu (called a "style") named for the brave fighting bug known as the Praying Mantis.

And they're certainly fearless, tackling prey that's often much larger than themselves. Mantises are ambush hunters, waiting silently (disguised as leaves or flowers) until some suitable dinner shows up -- such as beetles, butterflies, spiders, crickets, grasshoppers, and spiders. The huge (8+ inch) Tenodera and Archimantis mantises have been known to dine on small tree frogs, lizards, mice, nesting birds, and hummingbirds. And of course, they also eat other mantises. There are limits to mantis ambitions, fortunately -- they don't normally consider anything much bigger than the tiniest birds as suitable prey.

These tough little carnivores have adapted to a wide variety of habitats and prey. http://www.insecta-inspecta.com/ They're found in many areas of Asia, Australia, Europe, and the Americas. Here in North America there are three types of mantids -- two imports (the Chinese mantis and the European mantis which were introduced into America as gardeners sought predators to control insects that destroyed food crops) as well as the native Carolina mantis. Worldwide, there's nearly 2,000 species of mantises -- filling a lot of ecological niches as a very varied predator.

The smallest mantises are only 2/5ths of an inch long (about a centimeter) even when fully adult. On the other end of the scale, the Tenodera and the Archimantis are startlingly large insects -- at least one of them reported to be 12 inches long! That's a BIG bug in anyone's garden! They're a fairly decorative predator, some with frilly edges to their carapaces that make them look like flowers. Most species are a dull green or brown, but others are dressed in bright pink or green. The flower mantises of Africa look enough like blossoms that other insects will land on them, hoping for dinner.

To me, mantises look like something out of a bad science fiction movie. They have a triangular-shaped head with a large beady eye on each side and, unnervingly, they can turn that pointy little head around a full 180 degrees to look over their own shoulders. They've got good vision, too, and can detect movement up to 60 feet away. Their hearing isn't bad, either, and they've got a specialized "hearing organ" in their bodies that let them hear the chirps of bats (who love a good mantis dinner). If a flying mantis hears a bat squeak, they'll change direction and dive for the ground to get away.

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