Little Monsters - Part IX: Praying Mantis!
The alien appearance of the Praying Mantis makes this a favourite Little Monster! Curious with well developed, extremely large eyes, on either side of triangular head, and the famous praying stance ensures the popularity of this large insect.
Let's start at the beginning!
Mantises of all kinds start life encased in a brood case which looks just like insulation foam.
It is strong and water proof, as it must protect the eggs and developing mantises from autumn until spring when they emerge. Each case contains hundreds of eggs!
Since there is no parental care available for mantises; each emerges as a tiny but capable nymph.
At this size, about 8mm, prey consists of tiny flies and aphids.
Mantises use camouflage to hide from predators, which includes other larger mantids even slightly older members of the same species.
As they develop and grow larger the mantis nymphs become bolder:
In late summer to early autumn the praying mantis has attained its adult size, and a curiosity to match. Rather than scampering away from motion, they will merely turn their head to assess what approaches.
By slowly and carefully positioning your hand in front of a mantis, it will readily climb on!
Cloudy skies also make great backgrounds to isolate the subject!
They also tend to climb upwards, so keeping your hand high ensures it doesn't crawl up your arm to ride on your head!
An adult female waits for a careless insect to approach the flowers.
The abdomen is distended with eggs that she will lay soon.
Finally the expectant mother surrounded by beautiful yellow flowers!
Don't get too close, those spikes on her forelegs are quite sharp!
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Comments are always welcome!
Little Monsters - Part I: Wolf Spiders
Little Monsters - Part II: Golden Orb Weaver
Little Monsters - Part III: Lynx Spiders!
Little Monsters - Part IV: Decorator Orb Weaver
Little Monsters - Part V: Black Back Paper Wasp
Little Monsters - Part VI: Dragonfly
Little Monsters - Part VII: Indian Fritallary
Little Monsters - Part VIII: Giant Japanese Hornet
I maintain and reserve copyright on all of my photos.
Wow, thank you for the stunning photos and explanation of the full circle! I'm so reblogging this :)
You're very welcome!
My first reblog! Thanks @simba :)
Beautiful, such an incredible little creature. Wonderful photography, such stunning work. Love nature so much!
Thank you for your support!
Some beautiful pictures here. The mantis is a fascinating creature... We don't have those where I live! :-)
Thank you @matrioshka , we didn't have them where I grew up either.
Great macro photography! And the praying mantis is an amazing creature indeed.
Thank you very much @cjclaro!
Amazing pictures that I know took patience and a sharp eye. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you very much! I'm glad you enjoyed the post, I'll have more soon. :)
These are amazing!
Thank you @birdie!
Great compilation, love the first shot especially!
Yeah, it's like it's going to get a passport!
Henna gaijin!!
I'm sure people have thought that more than once as I crouch among the plants and stare intently at the dirt with a big macro lens. :P
Initially looked at your photos on my smartphone, and now looking on my iPad and WOW do they ever look good!!
:D
This amazing creature is an inspiration to a kind of Chinese kung fu. If you search "Praying Mantis fist" in google. A wiki and some videos appear.
sorry, I've been missing out. starting to Follow.
Thank you for your support! I'm always delighted to have a new follower!
Yes, Kung-fu has a lot of animal inspired styles. I don't know many of them (the styles, I've only studied karate for 1 year about 14 years ago) but the drunken style is always great to see!
Also, the mantis style does look very cool. I do wonder how effective the highly stylized fighting stances work in real world situations, or if they are more useful as a memory aid in training your body to react.
I don't know but I saw a couple of shows and were quite impress though I personally rather do taiji (taichi) and have been practising more than 5 years.
Taichi is great, I'd like to try it sometime!
Picture and story time, good stuff!
Thanks @getonthetrain, I hope the information about the subject adds to the pictures! It's fun to write too.
@mweich, these photos are just incredible. Really, how to managed to capture them so well is anyone's guess. Very, very well done!
Thank you very much @ezzy! Not too much of a secret to the photos other than being passionate about macro photography and perseverance! Yeah, that's a cliche answer but nevertheless true.
This set actually spans two years for the oldest picture, the nymph on the leaf (Still one of my favourite photos I've ever taken) and most recent the mantis surrounded by flowers, taken last weekend.