Mantodeology (PRAYING MANTISES) with Lohitashwa Garikipati
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Oh, hey, it's that skin on the top of your cold hot chocolate. I'm Allie Ward. This is Ologies. And if you missed last week's Minnesota announcement, okay, so our shorter kid-friendly episodes, they're called Smologies. It's its own show. We launched another show. It has its own feed. You can subscribe to Smologies anywhere. You find podcasts.

You can look for this colorful new logo with a bird and a frog on it. Tell everyone you know who needs podcasts for the littler ones or work where we don't swear. We keep it classroom safe. So that's Mologies. But this, this is Ologies, which means we talk about the weirder stuff. That's the way I like it.

So this week, it's a longtime love of mine. It's mantids. It's mantises. We're going to figure it out. I met this guest via Instagram and within a minute of seeing his page, I messaged, I begged him to talk to me. 36 hours later, he was recording this.

and my life is better for it. So he graduated from UC Davis in entomology and is now getting his master's at Towson University in Maryland with a PhD up next on his list, but already has two published papers and is known in entomology circles as a mantis expert.

When a mantis expert is quoted in the media, there's a good chance it's him. He's been studying and keeping mantises for 15 years and even has the handle mentodeology on Instagram. Legit. So we're going to chat with him in a few, but first thank you patrons for supporting the show at patreon.com slash ologies and making this possible. You can join for one hot

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Exciting. Also, thank you for the one-star review, Cloudy2G, who says, thank you. Ologies is my favorite podcast.

I appreciate those words, CloudHUG, even though I think you meant five stars and not one, but that's okay. It happens. Okay, Mantodiology, coined by an actual expert and now a real word, and you will find it used in mantid forums, usually talking about him because he knows a lot. So the word mantis, oh, this has such a good history. So surprising. I figured man came from mantis, like hand, but no, no.

Mantis comes from the Greek for a seer or a soothsayer or a prophet, which came from earlier Greek, meaning to be inspired. And that root comes from passion and thinking. It has the same etymology as words like museum and mentor and mania. Mantis mania. It

It all comes from the same place. So we're going to go more into their mythology as well. But for now, tuck in. Get your appetite up for chatter about their evolution, barbed arms, how they hunt, sexual cannibalism, diving heads first into breakfast, Mantis motherhood, their alien egg cases,

huge eyes, what common pets they act like, if you should keep one as a pet, invasive mantises, mantid versus mantis, whether they actually eat hummingbirds or if that was an internet hoax, and why they can show you the way to hell with entomologist, researcher, mantid keeper, absolute pleasure, and mantodiologist, Lohit Garikapati. ♪

I was like, oh, I want to go there so bad. I wanted to go so bad. I've never been to an etymology conference. That was actually my first one. It was a lot of fun. Yeah. Oh, I would have. I don't know. I would have died. I mean, they're all there, right? They're like the ant people and the wasp people and the, you know, butterfly people. It was honestly overwhelming. It's like when you have a big menu at a good restaurant, there's so many options. You can't pick. Yeah.

And, oh, first, I'll also have you say your first and last name and your pronouns. I forgot to do that at the top. Oh, of course. Yeah. My name is Lohit Garakapati. I go by he, him pronouns. Yeah, mantises are cool. Yeah.

How long have you been a bug nerd? Yeah, that is the technical term that I tend to use. Yeah, I've been into bugs ever since I was like five or six. It's sort of been like a lifelong thing for me. I was initially really into dinosaurs and then it kind of just...

sort of split into other nature things and bugs are just always around. So they're really easy to observe and sort of, you know, play with, keep as pets, whatever. Did you have a gateway bug that got you from dinosaurs to bugs in general? Was it mantids or was it like tarantula or something?

Oh, it was actually a funny you mentioned spiders. I'll circle back to it. But it was actually ladybugs. To start off with, I actually did a science fair project on ladybug life cycles. And I sort of had been collecting them outside our apartment and you know, just find them in grass was like, Oh, they must be eating grass.

Of course, most people probably listening know that they do not eat grass. And so that experiment did not end up going well. But what it did do is it prompted me to go to the local library and do some research on their life cycle. And then, you know, knowing that they eat aphids and things like that, I was able to actually rear them

through one year of their life cycle. And that was super exciting. And that kind of really set me down this path of insect keeping. We spoke over video chat and behind him was like a baker's rack filled with tidy, white netted enclosures, each with a cherished bug or two. You can kind of see

This is my room. A lot of stuff. So yeah, captive observation has been really, really exciting for me. I think it's a great opportunity to stay sort of connected with nature, but then you get to see all these things that they do that you might not normally be privy to. Because I mean, most of the time it's hard to find some of these insects. They're small or they're just well camouflaged like our mantises. And so getting to see them in captivity, you get to see really special stuff

I hadn't thought about that, about how much of the behavior you'd have to be really right place, right time to ever catch. And what about mantids in particular? I don't know if you know this about me, but I did have a pet...

her name was Mirabelle. Oh, okay. And she loved mealworms more than anything. And this was in my 30s. Like, not when I was six. This was like, not that long ago. And then when she died, we had an open casket funeral for her. And my friends all dressed in black and wore veils and stuff. For the curious, you can head to Instagram and look up the hashtag RIPRangMantis. She's gone, but she's not forgotten.

Well, she's not really gone either, I guess. I still have her in a little box. But yeah, she was my buddy. I miss her. But yeah, why mantids? I think your story is a good example. I think they're just really charismatic. I mean, even for insects in general. It's hard for me to pick a specific thing because people always ask me this. Why do you like mantises so much? And I think...

There's a lot of things that they do that I think people don't really realize that they do, from mating displays to maternal care, and we can talk more about that later, but I think part

part of in keeping them, I've gotten to see some of this stuff. And it's really been like, oh, wow, that's another thing that I like. That's another thing that I like. I think the thing that really got me into mantises in the first place is probably a thing that a lot of people think is cool about them is they're hunting. I've probably watched in my lifetime now, like hundreds and thousands of strikes. And it's still super exciting to watch it every time you give them prey, and then they go stock it and then go catch it. So

I think definitely that got me into them. It's very exciting. Like watching an apex predator take down an antelope and you're like, that's horrifying, but it's all nature. It's a circle of life, but like with a very small tiger and a maggot, I think. What do they tend to eat? Do you feed them like mealworms and crickets?

I actually, I feed them cockroaches, bladder lateralis cockroaches. They're great because they can't climb plastic, so it makes it really easy to deal with them for feeding. Oh,

So I just tossed them in the container and they can't escape from the container that they're in because crickets jump and they make noise. So I've kind of strayed away from them over time. But in the wild, mantises eat a lot of different stuff. I mean, you have species that specialize on nectar feeding insects in general, like, you know, the orchid mantis that everyone knows super well.

Well, for the people whose algorithm is not filled with macro bug photography, I don't know what your life is like. But an orchid mantis is like a Barbie pink and white insect. It's about half the size of your thumb and it does an uncanny impression of a jungle blossom.

But unlike an orchid, they are thirsty for killing. There's species that specialize on butterflies. So they sort of have a pretty unique hunting strategy with them. There's ant specialists. And then you have species that kind of are more generalist and they'll eat pretty much anything that they can really grab or get their raptorial forelegs around. And some of the bigger species even eat vertebrates. So, I mean, they're all over the ecological chain of

I don't understand how that's possible because I know there's a viral video that's gone around of a mantis catching and starting to eat a hummingbird, which is like giant. That's like me having a sandwich the size of a car. Why would I need that much? How do they do it? The short answer is they're just very strong. And I think they...

They really rely on being able to surprise their prey because mantises are strong, but I think in a straight up fight, they really rely on being able to grab and lock down the insect or prey from it moving and then just getting a couple of good bites in that can kind of subdue it for the most part because they have to start eating it while it's alive without any venom or anything like

that. So yeah, they're a lot like big cats in that way. They really just need the ambush to try and overpower their prey. Otherwise it'll potentially get away. It's interesting to think of a man to be like, okay, I'm stuffed. I'll move on. But then they don't know leftovers though, right?

they don't do leftovers no usually not um mantises are pretty i'll say that they're picky they really like the juicy bits of stuff so they tend to leave little if it's like very like the ends of insect legs or wings they really don't like those so they'll discard them it's really funny because when you watch them eat like a fly or something you'll see them eat they get to the wings and they like take a couple bites they're like nah and then they just spit it out basically

I don't like this. So they can be a bit picky, but they'll eat almost anything. Legs just like pizza crusts, like everywhere. Yeah, only the finest for them. They only like the finest morsels of food. How many mantids do you have? Do you keep?

Presently, I think the number is close to 100. And just sort of fluctuates depending on how many nymphs I end up having from eggs hatching or adults and stuff like that. So it just varies. Well, I guess we should, or I should actually establish, technically speaking, what is a mantid?

Yeah, so there's roughly 2,500 currently described species. They tend to have triangular heads. A couple of the features of the group are that they have a specialized cleaning brush on their forelegs. So when you see mantises do that cat-like cleaning motion, they actually have a brush there that's gathering up all the bits of dirt and stuff from...

things they've eaten or collected just to clean their heads off. So that's unique to mantises. No other insect has like a centralized brush like that just for cleaning. Oh my God. Just pretty cool. I needed to know what this was called because I hoped it was like a micro scruffle or like a little facey, scritchy, scritch. But according to the 2017 study, Manual of Praying Mantis Morphology, Nominclature and Practices, it's called a femoral brush. And it's a small patch of hairline

projections on the front of the forelimb. And I Googled images. I was like, what are we talking here? And under microscopy, it looks like if you had a goatee on your wrist and you used it to get croissant flakes off of your head. 10 out of 10 sexy.

Speaking of baby making. They tend to lay uthiki, or that's what we call their egg cases. They're often foamy coverings to protect the eggs. And those can be in a variety of different shapes. There's some that look like cotton candy. There's some that look like little galls. So super variable there. And they tend to have asymmetrical genitalia. I don't know if people are interested in that tidbit. It's sort of weird for insects.

I mean, of course, we always bug junk. Talk is welcome here. Bug junk is great. It's weird. That's like one of the ways you can tell a male from a female, right? Is looking at the tip of their butt.

Yeah, that's a great way. Mantises are what we call sexually dimorphic, right? So males often are skinnier and they tend to have very long antennae, bigger eyes for their head size than the females. And then, yeah, you can look at the end of their abdomen and tell really easily because the females will have a point, which is their ovipositor coming out the bottom. And the males just have this cup-like shape, but it's just modified in a different way to house the insect junk. Yeah.

What is a mantis dick called? We'd call it the genitalia, but there's three main pieces, or phalameres is what we call them. Phalameres? Yeah, in the mantis...

situation. Good to know. Need more info? So did me. So I found the paper Functional Morphology of the Praying Mantis Male Genitalia, which starts with an absolute banger of an opening sentence. The diversity of genitalia in the animal world is difficult to overstate. Indeed. And it continues to describe that mantis copulation is divided into three phases. There's opening, anchoring, and deposition. Essentially, foreplay,

the nasty, and the finish. And the first stage involves opening the female subgenital plate. And the mantodiologists involved in the study observed multiple cases of female cooperation or resistance with one case of coercion by the male. And once the loading dock is open though, a clamp on the male's right thalamir maintains this tight grasp.

on the ladies' privates. And the paper delivers some details of some, quote, rhythmic motions, which stimulate the female as well as the male, but also serve to remove any rivals' depositions. As long as they're in there, they're just going to...

clean up a bit. Now, females have a tip at the end of their abdomen, and this is their digging and their egg laying poker. It's called an ovipositor. And in general, they have larger bodies and a thicker, wider abdomen. That's how you can spot them. They use that to carry all those little eggs to make more mantids or mantises. Okay. And mantis or mantid,

What's the proper way? Yeah, so this is a good question. So mantids is historically correct. So mantises as a whole used to be considered one family. So they were man today within the order Dicteoptera. But now Dicteoptera is a super order and mantises order Mantodia, their own order. And man today is still a valid family. That refers to one of the

27 currently recognized families. So if you say mantids, people usually know that you're talking about mantises. But in a taxonomic sense, mantises would be more correct for the whole order. Mantids would be for the singular family. If you're like, well, you lost me at all those words, don't worry about it. There's not going to be a quiz. Essentially, it's just gone back and forth with this huge update in 2019. And probably people have been

in a conference room crying and fighting about this. But the latest is that mantises, of which there are around 2,500 recognized species, belong to the order Mantodia. And mantids are in a family below that. So not all mantises are mantids, but all mantids are mantises. And it's...

It's confusing. Mantid is now a more narrow group than mantises, even though it used to be kind of reversed. So if you're feeling confused, you're in amazing company, even among mantodiologists. Absolutely zero yelling at me about this is going to be tolerated. 2,500 species of mantises, and they range from grassy greens to pink to brown with bodies that are spiky or leaf-like. There are stick mantids with

pointy heads, cobra mantises with one wide fin on their shoulders behind their head. There are these cream-colored spiny flower mantises whose abdomens are spiked with these yellow points. And then when their wings are out,

They look like they have two mustard-colored owl eyes. There are other mantids like Stagmomantis limbata that might be opalescent or look like a drab camo parka that your cousin would wear on a deer hunt. There's this huge devil's flower mantis, which can be up to five inches in length. There are ghostly white mantises and even this gorgeous, maybe my favorite, I don't know if I have a favorite, but maybe my favorite,

Metallica splendidus, which lives underneath bark and is this metallic green and blue color, like a new car with brassy amber wings that look like they're made of copper. So much diversity, and yet...

So much similarity. Your academic background or your hobbyist turned business background, like, can you tell me a little bit about how you narrowed your focus to Mantis' and like where you're at with it?

Yeah. So for the longest time, I actually wasn't even thinking about doing academic research. I mean, I came into my undergrad not really sure exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to do something with life sciences. I just always liked mantises and keeping them as a hobby. And so in that sense, I was interested in them from a purely hobby perspective. I enjoyed like the raising new species and sort of learning about them in that sense. And part of it also was my parents weren't really interested

At the time, they were like, oh, I don't know, like a career in insects. Is that like really a thing? And so they had like some skepticism. But then I did my undergrad at UC Davis and I got to be a part of the Bohart Museum of Entomology, which is really great, really great group of folks. And then through there, I got really introduced to entomology as an academic discipline. And so I learned about, you know, the taxonomy of the different insect groups, how to identify different insect groups.

And then it was kind of a lock and key situation. I worked there for one summer and I was like, yeah, this is great. I really want to do this. And it was nice because in addition to doing whatever I needed to do for the museum, I actually got to work on curating the Mantis collection there because it hadn't really been updated in 30 years, 40 years or so. And so there's a lot of cool stuff. Did you know there was a Bohart Museum of Entomology in Davis, California? Yeah.

Neither did I, because nobody told me. But also, it's not far from your grandpaw's final resting place. And perhaps a field trip is in order. So all those in favor, say, it's really just up to me. Okay, so the place, though, seems delightful and dumbs my kind of nerds. And that was just fantastic. And like that, up to that point, I was like, I like it, I like it, but I hadn't done it. And then after working on that paper and going through the whole process, I was like,

Like, yeah, I could see myself doing this for a long time. So, yeah. And now mantids, mantises, where are they endemic to? And do they tend to be from one region or are they everywhere? Yeah.

Yeah, so there are native mantises found pretty much all over the world except Antarctica, so every major continent. Of course, like most insects, they're most diverse in the tropics. So you'll see most of the variation in morphology and species diversity there. But, you know, we do have a lot of species in the U.S., for example, alone. I know a lot of people think that we tend to have just one or two, the Chinese mantis and the Carolina mantis, but we have 27 species.

native species in the US. So a lot more, a lot more than people think. Yeah. And that's just what's been described. So this year, actually, I described a new mantis species from Arizona and it's, it's pretty big. It's a big species in the genus Stagwamantis. So just to point out that like mantises haven't had a lot of work done. So there's potential for new species still to be discovered if people go and collect and, and, you know, check their collections against what's been recorded. It's very exciting. Yeah.

That is really exciting. For more on this, you can see Lohit's 2023 paper, Observational Reports of Ovi Position Differences in Geographically Disparate Populations of Stagmomantis Lombata, the Non-Consumptive Effects of Invasive Competitors, which includes photos of the European mantis and the bordered mantis with their egg cases on everything from oak leaves to dry grasses to fence posts. Oop!

don't put them anywhere. In general, habitat wise, are they looking for really leafy areas where they can hide behind things or do they do okay like arid but burrow dwelling or something? Mm-hmm.

Oh, yeah, that's a great question. So it depends on the species, which is like a very hand wavy biology answer. It depends, right? We always hear it all the time. But it really does. Each species tends to have different types of micro habitats they tend to like. So some species really like grassy fields, some species like more open chaparral habitat, like

the ground mantises and the genus Lidonutria. If you're ever in the Southwest US, you'll see tons of those late summer. They're so abundant. It's crazy. And then you have species that look more like sticks and they really like more hanging out in the branches as opposed to closer to the ground. So yeah, it just varies. So while the largest praying mantises might top out around five inches or 13 centimeters, how teeny we talking? How small do they get?

like mantises in general, as full-grown. Because I know we see nymphs coming out of the Uuthika. Mm-hmm.

How did you pronounce it? Uuthiki. Yeah. Uuthiki. Yeah. Okay. Good to know. That's one of those words you see written much more than you say it. It's a strange word. Uuthika means an egg container. And in Greek, an uuthike is an ovary and not a capsule full of tiny roaches or mantids.

When they pop out of that thing, like a clown car, there's so many of them in there. They just scatter. They start eating each other. It's a buffet as well as a family reunion at the same time. All in one. And so that's really where survival, that's just where natural selection comes in, I guess, right? If you can outrun your hungry siblings, then...

Your genes move on. - Two, three, go! - There's definitely cannibalism is like of course the thing that mantises are super well known for. Everyone knows the mantises do the thing.

- Definitely a lot of the nymphs will end up eating each other at some point. Usually within the first 24 hours, and across many species, this sort of tends to be true, the first day is really when the nymphs are focused on running away. So they just wanna find their own territory, get away from everyone.

minimize potentially competition with their siblings. And then after that, it's kind of a free for all for most of the species, especially the ones in the temperate areas, just because the competition is so stiff because winter is always coming in a couple of months. So in places like the US, the nymphs kind of just have to be like, make a decision. Okay, well, my siblings here and I'm not getting a lot of food. So

You know, I'll take the meal that I can get. Sometimes dinner is an alive family member and it's regional cuisine. So you say when in Rome and very hungry. But it's sort of interesting because in the tropics, you see a lot of the opposite. So there's...

sort of some differences instead of hatching all at once, like a lot of the egg cases tend to do here. You'll have egg cases that hatch a couple individuals per day or a couple individuals every couple weeks or something just to sort of give the individuals time to disperse. Or you'll have siblings that are more tolerant of

each other and they tend not to cannibalize. So there's some variation. It's pretty interesting. It hasn't really been well studied, though, because I think everyone is under the assumption that, you know, mantises do the cannibalizing. That's like what they do. So what about when you're keeping them? Do you have to be really on top of it in terms of when they hatch out and if you are putting them into their own sort of territory? Mm hmm.

- Yeah, usually once they hatch, because when they hatch and wriggle out, and it's really cool if you've never seen it happen in person, but they basically, each nymph will spin a little line of silk and emerge out of the egg case and dangle down, and then that's when they undergo their first molt. So they'll do it midair while hanging down from the string of silk.

They'll molt, and then they look like an actual mantis that we know rather than an alien worm. I can send you a video of this if you want to see it later. So the mantises kind of squirm out of these few slits in this hardened Uuthika, and then they dangle off these silk threads in a baby gang, and it looks like a huge bunch of helium balloons, but upside down. And instead of balloons, they're itty-bitty light-colored mantises.

whose skin shells still need to harden. And then they hop off their silk threads and onto a surrounding surface. She'd go, well, holy smokes, that shell was crowded. Also, I'm starving for bug guts. What do we got? It's very cool. And then so once they do their molt, now they look like a mantis, but they need to sclerotize. So that's when they harden their exoskeleton, right? Getting ready to be able to hunt and jump and run away. And so usually what will happen is they'll kind of just sit somewhere for a couple hours while they're hardening.

And then that's when they start running around like crazy. So it becomes really hard to move all these little babies into their own cups. And so usually what I tend to do is I just keep them in like a sort of big enclosure that they have a lot of space and a lot of perches so that they can still separate out but not stress each other out too much. And then just keep giving them food in an effort to minimize the cannibalism. But it still happens. Unfortunately, it's inevitable. Yeah.

It's just instinct. I mean, it's how they've survived this long. Yeah. What about other natural adaptations? Because they're so diverse, at least from a morphology.

Can you tell me about some of the weirder looking ones? Definitely, yeah. I mean, one of my favorites is definitely the genus Toxodera. Most people probably haven't heard of them, but they're the Asian dragon mantises. They're a common name. So they're giant. They're like six, seven inches long, super elongate. They have these like really beautiful protrusions on them. Okay, I wasn't going to interrupt to describe them, but then I looked them up. People...

People, these things, they're native to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela, and they're this mottled brownish green color and they have just...

giant alien eyes that are much taller than they are wide. So these big vertical eyes, each of which is topped with like a cake server spatula shaped horn, and then one bigger cake spatula horn in the middle of their head. And then these two long pointy antennas, and they just look so gorgeously evil, like an extraterrestrial that you want to kill us all. It deserves to.

Stunning. And they're butterfly specialists. So basically what they do is they'll sit under a leaf and they have these really long legs that are sort of spaced closely together so they can just dangle and they almost get a full 360 degree motion just by being able to rotate their legs. And they'll sit with their forelegs held open when they see a butterfly fly by. And if the butterfly gets close enough, then...

The bear trap closes and they snatch it out of the air. It's very, very, very cool mantis. Genus Toxodera. Very weird. Very strange. They don't even look like a normal mantis. They're very cool insects. Do they eat the wings too? Or are they like, meh?

Those actually, I think they do eat some of the wings, but I think they will also. It's a weird thing. The analogy I like to use is like if you watch a grizzly bear hunting during a salmon run when they go for the salmon eggs, because that's what mantises like to do. So when you see the mantises posted up in your garden, they're going to eat all the good stuff because they know more food's going to come. It says it's all you can eat. We did have some milkweed in our garden and we had a couple monarchs in stars on there.

disappeared. And I'm like, I don't know who's eating them, but that's all right. Circle of life. Can mantises eat monarchs? Aren't they toxic because of their host plant, milkweed? No, I couldn't resist looking it up. And yes, there is a 2017 article titled Impact of Consuming Toxic Monarch Caterpillars on Adult Chinese Mantid Mass Gain and Fecundity, which explained that number one,

Mantids discard the gut tissue from monarch larvae while consuming the rest of the caterpillar. They just toss those guts right out, even though the caterpillar's body still has those cardenolides, which are these plant steroids that make a lot of birds barf when they eat monarchs. Now, this study actually found, this is wild, that when mantids ate monarchs and their larvae, they gained more weight and they produced heavier eggs. So the verdict is,

is a mantis goes hard and eats toxic things and thrives. And it does it in your face. What about...

ones that look like sticks or orchids or yeah, what are some other mimics or morphs that they've got? Yeah, there's lichen mimics. Like you mentioned, there's stick mimicking species. We actually have two in the US. So if you ever go to Arizona or Texas, you can look for the unicorn mantises that are there. Each state has their own respective species. So they look just like a stick. They are modeled and have wavy legs and they look just like

They'll blend in perfectly. It's really cool. There's species that have grasshopper-like hind legs, so we call them the grasshopper mantises. And they also can jump quite well like a grasshopper. Also very cool, small little guys. There's species that mimic bark, so they will hunt on tree faces. So if you're ever in Florida, we have a native species there that you can find.

We have grass mimicking species that are more slender and very narrow. So just to hide within the grass. There's species that make flowers, of course, like our orchid mantis that everyone loves. But there's also species in Africa and South America that also convergently evolved some similar morphologies. They're also doing the same mimicry. And of course, dead leaf mimics, tons and tons of dead leaf mimics and mantises. Because if you're a dead leaf, then you don't have to move at all because you are the ultimate sit and wait predator.

So imagine those crispy brown leaves that you crunch through and fall, but up close, one of them has legs and a mouth and a brain and an agenda. That's a dead leaf mantis.

Some species mimic the type of dead leaf that kind of hangs off a branch and falling off. There's species that mimic more generally the forest floor litter. There's species that try to mimic like a gnarled twisted leaf that's on a branch. So it's lots of different variations. Really cool.

They're so gorgeous. It's so nuts when you see them and then they start walking. I wonder if it has ever really given like existential crises to animals out there where they're like, that leaf just started walking. I don't know what's real. What just happened? I swear that leaf was over there. And then what about research that mantis do?

entomologists, mentodeology? Mentodeologists, I guess? Mentodeologists are doing like, are there particular issues with like invasive species predating on local species or are there like

This one's dying out. What are mantid experts worried about right now? Yeah, that's a great question. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of mantis researchers in general. And I think this is sort of a double-edged sword because it's very exciting in the sense that any new discovery about life history or ecology tends to be new because not many people have researched it. But that also means there's less to go off of.

And you sort of see this in how people like the USDA, for example, has policy around praying mantises. So, you know, Chinese mantises are totally, for example, okay to sell at garden stores pretty much anywhere, regardless of whether it's the East Coast or the West Coast. So if you find them in California or anywhere else, it's because they were subsequently just brought outside from a garden store and sold there. So, yep, you can buy Uuthiki for pest control.

like garden aphid control. And even Amazon will sell you a full egg case for 15 bucks, which is like 8 cents per mantis. But mantodiologists are like, try to find your native ones so that invasive critters don't compete for food with the locals. Okay? And in the U.S., the Chinese mantis, again, big ones,

up to four inches, or a European mantis can be so much larger than native species. Also, it's not my fault that that sent me down a hole learning about how the Chinese mantis was first observed in North America in 1897. The first one was found on a tomato vine of one Mr. Joseph Hindemeyer in the small suburb

of Mount Airy, just outside of Philadelphia. And to this day, it's thought that this globally lauded local botanist and landscape garden architect, his name was Thomas Meehan, imported some plants. And now we've got these big butted beauties everywhere, including my yard. I love them, but...

But they do push out native Carolina mantises. I mean, I've seen it just on campus in certain patches because they tend to be bigger and they grow faster. And so Carolina mantises end up having a tough time competing with them. And I'm sure as you saw with your monarchs and stuff, they can get eaten. And when you have an invasive mantis that's

two and a half times bigger than a native species and they exist in high abundance. They're vacuuming up a lot of biomass. How much that is, I mean, no one has really done a proper study to say, but there has been papers that have shown that they push out wolf spiders, for example, in their area just because they smell the mantis' fecal matter and then they

want to leave the area because they know they're going to get eaten, I guess. Oh, wow. Some sort of aversive learning there. If you smell the poo of an assassin, get the fuck out of there pronto. Also, mantis shit is called frass. Way better sounding name than shit. I wish ours was called frass and there's no reason why we can't start immediately. But if you need some of this frass, be

buy mantids in your life, but you don't want to chase the mantids around with a tiny diaper, you can purchase two liters of a soil enhancing product called Frass Farms Pro Mantis, which is just a sealed bucket of mantid poop and other goodies that provide, quote, enormous biodiversity, bacteria, and fungi species. That's one way to get rid of wolf spiders, but I really would not recommend it. But yes,

people, and not just wolf spiders, are still figuring out what is happening with invasive mantids. So we do have some evidence that, you know, at least the non-native species do eat things or do have impacts that native species don't. We just haven't done enough to sort of look at that yet. Could I ask you some questions from listeners who had 1 million questions? Of course. Yeah, of course. Yes.

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Okay, patron questions. If you want your question asked and name said with my mouth, you can join patrons at patreon.com slash ologies so I can look at them and maybe pick them. And all right, let's get our spiky death forearms on some of these queries, shall we? Let's see. Erica Flory wants to know, what is a collective name for a group of mantids?

Oh, I don't think that's been made yet. You can call it a menagerie. I don't know. A menagerie of fantasies. Done. A mobilization of fantasies. Of fantasies. Both excellent. I think that you get to decide. I think you just did. All right. Fair enough. Mouse Paxton, parent to Mantis Henrietta the Destroyer, and Pali Toxin Princess Dawson Leone, the mama to Mantids, Neen Innocent.

And Mackenzie King wants to know, why do they look so wise? Like they definitely have secrets to the universe in that triangle head. And Emily McLeod said, OMG, I had the same question. They do that head tilt that makes it look like they're thinking really hard. Are they the scholar of bugs? The joyful spitfire also wants to know, are they pensive and enlightened? Are they pretty smart? Good hunters? I like to think so. I think, um,

I would say they're a lot like cats because they will, they do like laser pointers. That's sort of an aside, but they go about hunting the same way a cat would. So, you know, they see something, they sort of really tuck down, get in, get into the stocking. And then if the thing that they're hunting freaks them out, then they freak out and they're, they have no interest in hunting anymore. Just like a cat. Yeah.

I'm out of here. So they're very feline. If you actually sit and watch them, so all the cat lovers should love mantises because they're basically small cats that you can find anywhere. Correct. If you love cats, you will maybe like mantises. Maybe love them. Um...

And I say this as a cat person. I have two cats. But yeah, mantises, I think, are fairly smart. They do really pay attention to what's going on around them. And that's part of what makes it so frustrating to find them sometimes is because unlike a lot of other insects, mantises will try to change the way that they're hiding. So they may be waiting.

for prey and then they see you coming by and they realize, oh shoot, that's the thing that might want to eat me. And then they'll change their posture to be more like a stick. Or if they're on bark, they'll try to run around to the other side of the tree. And so it can be quite the challenge trying to find the mantis because you got to put yourself in their mind a little bit. Think about how they're thinking about you. Have you all studied like how big their ganglia is or if they can remember things? Like have there been any neurological testing of mantids?

Yeah, there has been a little bit, not for mantises specifically, but I think when people have looked into insect brain structures and head structures, they do include mantises. And for mantises, they tend to include very commonly used species in studies like Chinese mantises or Carolina mantises. My understanding is that I don't think it's especially large or different than most other insects. I think they're just such a visual animal that they're very attentive for that reason. And so they can make

decisions and move about their environment in a way that's very different than a lot of other insects might. But you might not even know they're there because they look bonkers. So E asked quite bluntly, why do they look like that? Sean Hebrank wanted to know, is aggressive mimicry the best phrase in science? And are orchid mantises the coolest animal ever?

Let's learn. Other folks asked about camouflage like Sarah Rosero, Anna Stevens, Erin Gunderson, Jen Squirrel Alvarez, Liv Timbrini, Kathleen Regovic, Miranda Panda, Chandler Witherington, and Evan Davis, who asked, what causes some to be pink? Aesthetic queen, they say. And Ada wanted to know why do so many mimic flowers or other insects? And that's just...

good camouflage so that they can hunt better, right? Yeah. For orchid mantises, though, it's aggressive mimicry. So they don't actually even need to be in flowers or even near flowers at all. They reflect UV light actually better than flowers in some cases. And so prey will just fly right to them. They are the flower and then prey just gets confused and they get eaten.

So in some species, it's mostly for camouflage. Totally correct. In some species, though, they take it to the next level and they use it against their prey. That's so tricky. And I wonder if they realize that they look so much like a flower or if they're just like, hunting's actually really easy for me for some reason. Do they realize? Stuff just comes my way. Everything just works out. Yeah.

Everything happens for a reason. You're just born looking like an orchid. But what about, Andy McAdams wants to know, do we know at what point in history they started being referred to as praying mantids? And also with this much talk of prey, ever

Every time I go to spell praying mantis, I want to spell it with an E, like they pray on things. Patrons Sarah King, Mish the Fish, Hope Madeline all asked, essentially, what religion are mantids? Who are they praying to? And others had questions about their mythical reputations, like Amelia Diaz-Edinger, Dirt Witch, Neen, the Joyful Spitfire, and essentially, Andy McAdams and Sarah King asked for all of us. What's with the name? Yeah.

So I agree, it is confusing. And when I started, I totally did that all the time. So I understand. But the praying mantis term actually comes from the first species that was described by Linnaeus, Mantis religiosa. It's still a valid species. That's the European mantis. So if you're in any of the northern states, it's probably the most common mantis you'll see. It's everywhere now. But Mantis religiosa, translated from Latin, literally means praying mantis. So praying mantis.

And what's in a name? A lot of behavior that made people go, hey, that reminds me of stuff. And according to the 1999 textbook, the predatory behavior of mantids, historical attitudes and contemporary questions. Centuries ago in Egypt, a mantis appears as a deity called the bird fly in the Book of the Dead, and it leads souls to the underworld.

Thanks, bird fly. You're welcome. And the Greeks also gave mantises the reputation of a diviner. And they thought they could point the way home because they didn't have GPS or even MapQuest. So it was like, fuck if I know, let's ask this bug. At one point, Greeks were even horny for them.

And over 250 years before the Common Era, that pastoral poet, Theocritus, uses them as a visual reference to being locked in an embrace, writing this 2,000-plus-year-old sext, "'Lord, thy sin hath found thee out. Thou'rt wished and wished, and now faith thou'st won. There'll be a mantis to clasp thee all night long.'"

But in this ancient soft core porn, he doesn't mention anything about getting eaten face first. But we're going to cover that in a bit. But yeah, their arms look like they're preying on things. But really, they're just preying on things. Now, is there any evidence that maybe, maybe their praying mantis name is kind of a clever turn of phrase having to do with some organized religions having predatory behavior? No. It makes you think.

Doesn't it? So patrons Kate Goldenberg, Joe A., and mythology guests John Boucher, you can see his excellent episode linked in the show notes. He's amazing. And patron Emilia all kind of wanted to know if there was mythological trivia on their age-old reputation. So that's it. Speaking of age-old, Jamie Alexander wants to know, how long do mantids live? Great question.

I hate saying this, it varies. So most species generally, so this is just a rule of thumb, most species are going to be anywhere from the six to 12 month range. Usually males are more like the six to eight to 10 month range and females are up to that 12 months.

In the tropics, it's a little bit different, just because it's warm year round. You'll end up with species that can live almost two, three years in some cases in the females. So super long-lived species in some cases, yeah. - Do they go somewhere for winter or are they just okay with colder temperatures?

In places like most of the US where it does have like a normal winter, mantises usually overwinter in their egg cases. So the females will lay before winter and the eggs will just tolerate the cold and then they hatch in spring once the conditions are favorable. Except for those unicorn mantises that I was mentioning, they're weird because they will actually sit out in the winter as nymphs. And so they get snowed on, they get...

under the ice in Arizona and then when it thaws they'll shake it off and go hunting so how we do that we still don't know yet they must have some kind of antifreeze or something but it's really incredible

Oh, man. The next generation of mantid researchers, maybe we'll get to that. Oh, I hope. So there you go. Susan C. Lester, Susan Lin, Ellie Zwiebel, and Mouse Paxton. That's how they survive the cold. And by that's how I mean, we don't know. And please become mentodiologists to figure out how they evolved that ability. I would like that instead of wearing coats, but...

Here we are. Speaking of evolution, Colin Roboton asked why the mantis shrimp shares a name. And that's because the bug came first and the shrimp is named in honor of the insect. Also, in ancient times, mantis shrimps weren't even called mantis shrimps. They were called sea locusts. So...

They're copping bugs left and right. Now, speaking of posers, the lace-wing mantid flies and the wasp mantis flies, they both make you take double takes if you've ever seen one because they have wasp butts or they have lace-wing bodies, but they have those raptorial forelimbs. It's as if they were regular bugs wearing praying mantis Halloween costumes that they made out of oven mitts and cardboard and spray-painted in the driveway, but they're not even related. Just convergent evolution because...

quick, hinged, and spiked arms that get the job done. But you just need millions of years of mutations to figure that out. But that's how that works. Patron Faith Novella and Megan Matthews Adair. Now, Megan asked, why are lacewings such bastards that I have bites that hurt so much? I have bad news and I have bad news. So you're committing slander because mantis lacewings don't have mouth muscles enough to bite you. And the other bad news is that

You might have snake flies biting you. Both of those are good news for lacewing mantid flies because they are hereby acquitted of your accusations. They can go back to eating tree sap and other mantid flies, which isn't cool, but that's just not my jurisdiction. Also not my forte, kung fu, which was the topic previously.

of questions from Kate Goldenberg and Noah Pestana. But according to this one martial arts webpage I found myself deep on, the Northern Praying Mantis style Kung Fu is an art famous for its stripe captures and speed and also highly toughened hands and fingers. And the site continues that Imperial Praying Mantis Kung Fu is designed to fight multiple opponents with lethal intent and it comes from a direct lineage

of true combat level kung fu. Now, what were we talking about? Oh yes, direct lineages. Okay, Lissa Mercier, Amber McIntyre, first time question asker, Maria Wamond, Justin Bowen, Anne Hanagory, and... Cynthia B. wants to know, what have they evolved from and what's their current closest relative?

Not everyone's favorite group, but it's our humble cockroaches. I thought so because their heads, they're the same. Yeah. So if you want to think about it like this, mantises are really elongate feline predatory roaches because that is what they are. Elongate feline roaches. I'm

That might turn some people off, but I think it's a very cool story that two insects that have a common ancestor can end up being very, very different over time. That does make so much sense because if I look at a roach and...

And I try to think of its head as mantis-like. It freaks me out less. I love all insects, but roaches in a home or inside. But their heads look so... You should see that face and go, oh, I recognize you from the garden. It's all good. And

I've heard that roaches are also kind of fastidious cleaners. Is that true? Yes, roaches actually do spend a lot of their time cleaning. I think they just get a bad rap because we do have some pest roach species and understandably so, pest roaches, I'm also not a fan of. But most roaches do what most animals do in the wild, which is just go about their business. They try to take care of themselves. And roaches, like mantises, do clean, tend to clean a lot just to stay clean and for their own health. So

Maybe that was just something that evolved before they split apart and just stayed retained cleanliness.

So cockroaches are cleaner than your sink that attracted them. And they're probably talking shit about you on their podcasts. Speaking of reputations, patron Dean asked, why are they such feminine icons? And according to the 2020 paper, praying to the predator, symbols of insect animism on Luna Elmenco polychrome from the pre-Columbian Pacific Nicaragua were

Oral traditions called praying mantises the mother snake, and they were a symbol of matriarchy. Which brings us to, do praying mantis moms get floral arrangements from their thousands of babies a few times a year? Bjorn Fredberg asked, what do the mommy dids do after the eggs hatch? Or do they lay eggs in a fire and forget fashion? Are the newborn baby dids in danger of being eaten?

So maternal care is something that is not studied well in mantises at all. We do know that many species engage in it. It's not the majority, certainly, but a fair number do. And it seems to evolve multiple times across multiple groups, which is a great opportunity to study how maternal care evolves, because usually it tends to be an all or nothing sort of situation in most groups where most of the members do it.

And, you know, some don't or none do at all, but not the case with mantises. And usually what that looks like is the mother is sitting on top of the eggs, protecting it with her body to stop parasites or predators from attacking it. And once the eggs hatch, she'll even hang around for a couple of days until the babies all disperse on their own. And then she'll let them go on their way and find a new spot to lay her next set of eggs.

Oh, that's so sweet, though. She just hangs out for a bit. Yeah, pretty good parenting. I mean, I've had species that they are so unwilling to be parted from the eggs that they'll, you know, threat display and try to strike back at my hand when I go to try to remove the eggs for incubation. And I got to the point where I was like, well, this is a cool piece of natural history. So I just tend to leave the eggs with the mom now and let them

just do their thing. It's been really cool. I've gotten to see some awesome instances of, you know, the babies hanging out around mom and she's just like, oh God, deal with all these kids. Beautiful thing called motherhood. She doesn't eat them though, right?

No. Yeah. She's totally tolerant to them. In some cases, even if she moves off while she's going to hunt, she'll come back to the eggs after going off to hunt. So there's some spatial awareness there or she's smelling the eggs and knowing what they are, which is really cool. Yeah. They're quite good parents, the species that do engage in maternal care. I mean, they really protect their babies with their whole body if they can. And then...

I guess that brings us, though, to sexual cannibalism, as Derek asked about. Is it increased in captivity? Can you tell us a little bit about the romance of Mantis?

Oh, man. Yeah, there's a lot to talk about. Some species love displaying for the females. The males have these super eloquent displays, a lot like our peacock jumping spiders that everyone loves. They'll flash their wings. They'll wave their forelegs around. They often have bright colors to show off to the female. And a lot of that's just to sort of say, hey, I'm interested in mating. I'm not here to compete with you or anything like that.

And then usually once the female, if she actually likes the display, you know, she'll turn around and then he'll do his thing. By that, low heat means they will bone. Also, Derek wasn't the only little freak who asked about this. So did patrons Margo Lewis, Nicole Kleinman, Ashley Rocket, Laura, Grigoris of Tomsk, Devour of Pop-Tarts, Vagabond,

victor of many battles. Kathleen Regovich, Kara O'Rourke, Derek Allen, Zoe Litton, Danielle Fidelia, and Lisa Gorman also wanted to know about sexual cannibalism, in mantids at least. In captivity, sexual cannibalism does happen still. It's very rare in general. I would say it's maybe like 1 in 10, 1 in 15 mating events. If she likes it, they'll go ahead and go for it, but only like 1 in 15 encounters is potentially like...

not second date material. Yeah. Yeah. Usually the female is the, she really doesn't like the male. She'll just kind of walk away unless he keeps trying to bother her. Then she'll kind of get fed up with him sometimes. So there's a lot of female choice in some cases where the female is like, I really don't want to mate right now. And you keep bothering me. She will just eat him because he's like, you're not leaving me alone. Yeah.

Fuck with me, fellas! I've definitely had that happen. I've also had males... Usually I try to feed the females while I'm doing these attempts just to make sure they're full and they're not interested just because they're hungry to eat them. And sometimes the male will be like,

you know what, I actually need a snack. And then he'll try to steal her food, which then causes her to get bad and then still try to eat him anyway. Because he's like, well, now you're taking my food, which I can't blame her in that situation. That is fair enough. Do they ever then sort of pretend to be receptive just out of because they're hungry?

Oh, yeah. So this is something that I don't know if it's 100% the reason, if it's just because the female wants to mate with more males. But I've had females that I've mated sometimes even a couple times, and they'll still be releasing pheromones. And it's usually when they are not completely full yet, because they just need to make more eggs. So I think in that situation, they're like, well, like, if we end up mating, great. If not, free meal. Like, either way works. Yeah.

So they can be quite sly when they need to be if they're really desperate for food. Oh, that's rough out there, man.

But are invasive mantises making it rougher? Patrons Susie K, Emily G, Becky the Seagrass Scientist, Robin Kuhn, First Time Question Asker Valerie N, Rebecca Gerling, The Joyful Spitfire, Peyton Henderson, Sam Wise, and Tiger Yudi had a question about invasive species. With Robin wondering how worried to be, Becky asking how mad to be, and Allison Gusick straight up just wondering if mantises are maybe interplanetary visitors. Asking, are we sure they aren't aliens?

Natasha Garrison says, for Christmas a few years ago, my brother received a kit that allowed you to send away for a mantid egg for educational purposes. My questions are, is that okay? Is that doing anything crazy with the population? Is it helping or hurting? Or should I be buying a kit for my adult self right now?

I would say most likely with those kits, you're probably going to be eating Chinese mantises. And in that situation, it probably doesn't matter anyway because they're not native and they tend to be so abundant that even removing a couple dozen egg cases from some fields won't even make a dent. So I would say go for it. Live your best mantis keeping life. And do they have people that are kind of going out and harvesting those egg cases? Or those are captive animals?

Usually for the Chinese mantises, they tend to just collect them outside because they just tend to be so frequent and abundant, which is sort of a question our lab has been having recently is what is the population genetics like for the Chinese mantises here? Just because the egg cases probably got moved around from all over the place.

And they end up in places like California, not that they tend to persist there just 'cause it's drier, but they end up moving all over the country. So where are the sources and sinks of these populations? Are they all being collected from one area and then going everywhere else? Or are they intermingling? We don't know. But anyway, Chinese mantises, totally fine. - Let's say that you don't buy an egg case and you just want to bring all the mantises to the yard. What are we talking habitat-wise, ideally, asked?

Holly Brunkle, Amber Pineda, Rube, Papita, Bugs or Rad, Shannon Amioit, Colin Robottom, and first-time question asker and Eshtabula native Val Vanderlip. Also, Carly wants to know, first-time question asker, how can I attract mantids to my yard? I live in Olympia, Washington. So do you just buy some and put some out there? Or is there a way to attract them?

I would say if it's not a species that's native, I would recommend not just buying and releasing them totally to keep them as pets if you want, just on principle. But what if you want to send a message to wild mantises that your general area is just a chill place to hang out of doors? Yeah, so mantises really like...

gardens or green spaces that have a lot of foliage and insect succession. So because they start off so, so small and they end up so much bigger, they need to have insect prey that can grow with them. And so they're a great sign of a healthy, diverse habitat. So I would say if you plant plants that are native to your area and flowering plants that can attract nectar feeders, you'll eventually get mantises because they can only really sustain a population in an area when they have enough

prey that's regularly growing up with them, but also the habitat itself is stable. Oh, okay. And that just would benefit all kinds of pollinators as well. Yeah. Right.

Amazing. Good for everyone. Good for everyone. And I know Xerces Society is great for telling people what to plant in different zones. I think they might recommend different seed mixes too, which is pretty cool. It's true. And I'll link to xerces.org on my website because you deserve some beautiful wildflowers and so do all the tiny strangers that you will be friends with. Now, speaking of beauty, can mantises...

See you very well. Now, the Bloated Toad asked, what's up with their freaky eyeballs? And other patrons with eye questions include Mouse Paxton, DTL, One of One, Margo Lewis, Sean Verbridge, Allie B, Jennifer Fode, Jason Lowenthal, Dory, Miranda Panda, Charlie Eisman, Sarah Metzger, and first time question askers, Dwayne P.

Talos Fred and Maria Andres, who wanted to know if those big pretty boys are just for show. Alyssa Melissa, first time question asker, wants to know if you've seen the studies, more importantly the pictures, where they wore 3D glasses, how crazy is their visual system? Those eyes hold secrets. Yeah, mantises are...

Amazing in terms of their vision. I mean, they're the only insect that we know for sure has stereoscopic vision. So do we. That just means that two images at slightly different angles help perceive in 3D and swaying back and forth helps them. So they can gauge depth just by motion parallax. So when they're doing that side to side motion that you see them do sometimes, sometimes it could be for just for camouflage. But usually when they're sitting still and doing it, it's for gauging depth.

And that really lets them, you know, be the amazing hunters they are. And some of the species are even able to use that to just catch stuff on the wing. So fly flying by, snap it out of the air. I got it. I got it. So instead of having to stalk and ambush, it's just like that kind of precision to catch it.

- Yeah. - But Zambat, Neen and Jason Ganley wanted to know what is the small black dot on their eyes? And I looked this up, it's called a pseudopupil. And it's not a structure so much, but it's a spot where the ommatidia, those honeycomb looking compound eye structures are absorbing the light more. And they can have up to 10,000 of those little things. So the pseudopupil is a dark dot. It looks like it's moving as the mantis head turns,

But that's just a spot that's taking in more light and it can help you figure out where they're focusing on and if they're looking at you in case you're wondering like if a mantis is mad at you or ignoring you. But yeah, that's a pseudopupil and it's just a dark spot where light is being absorbed.

They're probably not mad at you though. They're just maybe hunting. And many patrons, including Margo Lewis, Olivia Lester, Hannah Gorey, Pepito, Light Brown Pillow, Hope Madeline, they all had limb questions and in Erin Christie's words, "How sharp are the claws? Like can they skewer stuff? Are they very strong? What's their main killing mechanism?" Can you tell us a little bit about how they have like essentially nails like in a two by four for arms?

Yeah, those raptorial forelegs are really powerful tools. So those spikes are really good at just trapping prey. And a lot of species, between the species, they'll have differences in the shape and the count and the texture of those spines. So some species really have flat spines that are not like, they're not really spines anymore. They're just flat little bulbs almost that look like molars, and they really use it to just crush the prey that they grab.

There's some species that actually stab their prey. So they're called Wolverine mantises. Oh my God. They don't actually grab their prey. They just straight up spirit. Yeah.

which is really metal. So as it flicks, it spiked four limbs forward at one twentieth of a second, which Animal Planet told me is twice as fast as you can blink your eyes. The spikes on the femur gouge into the prey, and then other spikes on the tibia clamp it down, and then they pull their limbs back in to start eating it alive. And I found a paper titled, Prey Speed Influences the Speed and Structures of Reptorial Strike of a Sit and Wait

predator, which used slow motion cameras on mantises and found that the speed of the strikes is really variable. And sometimes based on if the prey is moving toward the mantis, they'll slow down mid strike and adjust position to get that barbed claw.

clasp just right. So yeah, there's a ton of variation. It's really incredible how many ways the same leg and the same sort of tools can be used to like do different things. Man, that is metal. It's funny, right? As you were saying that too, I glanced at a question from It's Just Sarah that asked, does eating the male's head serve a purpose or is it just metal as fuck?

So I don't know. Do they eat the head or do they leave the head like a pizza crust? Oh, if they eat the head, that's just the appetizer. They're going to get to the rest eventually. Oh, right. Okay. Okay. They eat the head first.

Yeah. So you wanted to know specifically about not saving the head for dessert, but going straight to it like cake for breakfast. Patrons Deborah Gray, Matt Thompson. It's just Sarah, Alison Gusek and AK. Also, Allie B and Bjorn Fredberg. Bjorn wrote, I've heard that the female eats the male's head, but is that the only part? Why not eat the whole thing? Seems like a waste of good eating.

So when, so again, it does happen pretty rarely, but usually what will happen is when they eat the male's head, that causes the male to sort of just lock in because normally the males, you know, they want to mate and then find another female and then find another female. Just try to keep mating as many females as they can. Welcome to F-Boy Island.

But some females just instead of that, they're like, well, just give me all the sperm and then I won't have to mate with more males and I can just deposit a nice big egg case right now. So she will eat his head to drain his gonads and then grow his babies. And that is what I like to call partnership.

So then just eat the head and also helps because she needs the energy. Making those egg cases takes a lot out of her. I mean, they're laying like 100 plus eggs in some cases. So that's a lot to carry around. So very poignant that we're talking about this on Mother's Day. For all the moms out there, don't let anyone shame you for eating food. So mantises will do what they need to do. So you should too. Yeah.

If I were a gravid mantis, I would roll up on so many corn dogs. There would be a global shortage of corn dogs. So many babies I made out of corn dogs. Have you birthed a baby listening to this? You made that thing out of cereal and nectarines and chicken nuggets. Good job. Are they laying those like one once a season or like one once a week?

Oh, it's for some species. It's every week, every week they're laying 40 to 60 eggs. Some species go for the all eggs in one basket strategy, like the Chinese mantises, and they'll do like 201 egg bass. And they'll usually lay one of those like every month or so. So it just depends. Yeah.

And then what is that egg mass made of? Because it's like the ones that I've seen, I think they're probably Chinese mantises, but it's like rock hard. But it looks like foam, like insulation foam. Erica Flory and first-time question askers Francesca Hernandez Singer and Piper Warnick and Helios had asked,

egg questions and in spicy natives words why do their uuthikas look so weird also how does one pronounce uuthika okay so it's uuthiki according to lohit now we know like if you were locked out of the house and then you found your hide a key under a rock you'd be like oh sure

Yeah, so we haven't done a lot of examination into the differences in the structures between some of the egg cases. So we generally know that there's a protein called ovobumen that's used to sort of shape it along with other proteins and compounds. How they actually are able to

Make it is always been sort of a mystery to me because they have these Circe at the end of their abdomen that they use to sort of feel the shape. Circe are like butt fingers and I love them. No cap. But it's really like 3D printing and they're making this without looking at it. So if you imagine trying to mold like a vase without looking at it and then stuff it in a regular pattern with eggs and then seal it up.

On a stick. Oh, my God. It's really a cool piece of bioengineering. And it there's a lot of complicated structures that have to sort of work in tandem to make it happen. But yeah, you end up with, like you said, this really hard structure that can protect the eggs for up to six months.

Okay, so these things are generally about the size of a quarter, but some might be elongated and look kind of like a fossilized caterpillar with ridges. Or depending on the species, they might look more globular, kind of like a small oak gall. And if you look really closely, you can see ridging in them, kind of like they were pipetted out in waves of maternal contractions before they stiffened into their hard case.

So think of like a really small 3D printed dinner roll, gorilla glued to a fence or a branch.

how do they make the glue that can adhere something for so long? Like, is that being studied at all? I don't think anyone's looking into that, unfortunately. So what sort of what I was saying earlier, it's like really exciting because there's all this stuff that's untapped. And like, I mean, as you see, like there's so many interesting things that you could like look at if someone wanted to. There's just opportunities everywhere. So and then someone should do that and tell me because I want to know. Yeah, seriously.

You're like, shoot me a note. Sean Verbridge wants to know, how does their hearing work and why can they only hear ultrasound? Is that true? Yes. So for those of you who don't know, mantises have a cyclopean ear. So what that means is they have one singular eardrum. Not all the species have it. There's actually an entire group that's called the deaf mantises in Central and South America. Okay.

But the mantises that do have ears have one, and it's located between their middle and hind walking legs. So not those big reptorial legs, but those other pairs of legs. And yeah, what we know is that they're able to detect bat sonar with it. So when males are going and flying and looking for females, they hear a bat.

clicking at them, then they basically just drop. And that's a good way for them to avoid bats predating upon them. But the weird part, and this is a very recent paper that come out that's sort of really exciting about this whole story, is that the origin of this ear predates the evolution of bats.

So they were using it for something else and it was just co-opted for bat escaping. What they used it for before or what they may also continue to use it for now, we don't know. One ear and it's in their crotch. Even if you lifted weights every day of your life, you cannot beat that bod. Why try? Now, Sean Verbridge, Danielle Suchet, Alina Litton, they all had hearing questions. That's so thrilling to think that it's used for something that we just have no clue about.

Weird. Love it. Super weird. Yeah. What about Tony Benvenuti wants to know, why do I see them sway or dance back and forth? Oh, yeah. So that's going to be their motion parallax. So when they're gauging the depth or the distance to something, you'll see them do this in a forward and backward motion when they're stalking prey, especially. Again, that's just to gauge the distance. You'll see them definitely do it before they jump. So if you see a mantis hanging off a stick,

or at the edge of a sidewalk or something and it's really waving back and forth, it might be thinking about jumping up to you because you're a giant tree and they need to be able to look around. So patrons Helios and Muneeb Hasnain, that's why they're swaying. And as for dancing, first time quest asker, Makala Majdric and Fedge who asked, why can't we hear the music they're swaying to postulating that it feels like R&B, but maybe not?

They're just on that dance floor. They're moving their dang bodies and they're swiveling their heads to leer it, pray. Just like old school creeps at a discotheque.

That's nuts. So it might do it more when they're near us because they're trying to figure out what our deal is too, right? Yeah. Let's get to a more serious question. Kalia Elahi wants to know who would win in a fight, a cat-sized praying mantis or an actual cat? I love cats, but I gotta say it's the mantis. Yeah. Yeah.

They take some shockingly, and I say this as someone who's seen a lot of this, like it still shocks me that they take stuff as big as frogs and snakes and stuff. So...

Well, this is a little bit timely, but Rye of the Tiger wanted to know, walking alone in the woods, would you rather run into a bear or a bear-sized mantis? Oh, my God. The bear. Really? Oh, yeah. If it was a bear-sized mantis, it would just try to eat me. There's no question about it.

Also winged, right? So you can't outrun that. Then at that point it's too late. So I would take the bear. Yeah. Take the bear. Take the bear. Oh,

What about for you, Rive the Tiger also wants to know, if you could mutate and take one trait of mantids for yourself, what super mantid power would you choose? Oh, that's a really good question. I would take color changing. Pardon me? So mantises are able to color match. Not every species can do this, but a lot of them can. So they're able to change color within an instar or through instars to match the background that they're hunting on. I think that'd be pretty cool.

Oh my God, I didn't know that they could do that. I mean, what can't they do is the question. Yeah, taxes mostly. But patron Charlotte Parkinson asked, I feel they would suit a top hat, maybe a monocle? Thoughts? Charlotte?

Now, what about the rest of their public image? Some of you had pop culture questions, such as Natalie Rousseau, Celia Sanislo, Paulina Krasinska, and Nicole Kleiman, for example. What about Tyra Peria and a few others wanted to know, what's the most accurate screen depiction of a mantid film or TV? Someone else asked about a bug's life in Manny. Any thoughts? Oh, okay. Love Manny. He's great.

I think he would just eat his mate, even though, you know, usually female cannibalism, but he's a mantis. So as far as accurate portrayal, I would say there was a documentary sort of early 2000s on Discovery Channel that was quite good. I think a lot of documentaries tend to very dramatize mantises and

Definitely they make up the scenes, like they put the insects together in ways that they normally wouldn't be. With lightning-fast reflexes, it nabs a meal in a blink of an eye, then casually devours its victim while it is still alive. From humid tropics to arid deserts to your own backyard, the praying mantis makes its presence known. Its alien-like features have made it feared, revered, and misunderstood.

And that was from 2001, a program called Alien Insects. It's campy, but it's informative and it's realistic. But not all nature films are. And I can sort of tell as someone who's like seen mantis behavior before that, you know, the mantis is like,

normally wouldn't be in that position or they wouldn't behave that way unless they were stressed or something like that. Just keeping them inside stressed them out. Patron Greg Wallach asked, do they like us? And others, including Ellie Zwiebel, Susan Zalester, Anne Lynn, Margo Lewis, and Felix, as well as Tiana Floria and 23Skidoo asked. A ton of people wanted to know about captivity, the ethics of it. Zoe Litton said, are mantids a good pet? If you are enchanted by

by Mantis's. Tell us a little bit about becoming roommates with some. They're great roommates. Quiet.

clean, generally respectful. Though I do get the odd threat display from time to time. Mantises, I think, are great pets in general just because they take up so little space and the setup for them is very, it can be as cheap or as expensive as you want to make it. You can keep them in anything from like a small cup with sticks to this really nice planted vivarium. I think the

important thing to consider is what mantis you want to get, whether it's native or non-native. And if it's not native, then you have to be sure that you're doing a good job of making sure it's contained. It's not going to get out or something like that. And generally, I mean, I would say in terms of

in terms of the ethics of owning a mantis, I mean, they are, you know, insects. So there's no like excessive paperwork to, to keep an exotic species or something like that. But I just generally try to be respectful. Like I,

try to make sure I'm on top of their care and stuff like that. And I think it's just a good policy with any pet, you know, just make sure you're meeting their needs. Again, all amazing advice for relationships, partnerships. Also, you know, you mentioned something about native versus non-native too. Robin Kuhn wanted to know, how worried do you think we should be about non-native versus native mantids in the U.S.? That's a great question. So the non-native species, unfortunately, just tend to be bigger than the native species wherever they end up being. I would say at

At this point, just because most of the non-native species have been here for so long, there's not really much we can do unless there's a whole concerted effort to really go out, find the eggs, pull them up to actually get rid of them. I would say if you find one outside, you could totally keep it as a pet because they're great.

pets. And if you happen to see one, don't feel the need to, you know, do anything unless you want to. Like I was mentioning, Carolina mantises do tend to get pushed out when Chinese mantises move in. So you might consider removing Chinese mantis egg cases if you see them, for example. In the broad scale, it's not going to make too much of a difference. They're kind of here to stay in whatever damage or impact they may have had. It's already happened for the most part. And we're sort of seeing just a little bit of the downstream effects.

Mantises. They're here and you might as well love them forever so they don't eat your dog. That's flim flam. They can't do that. Don't spread that. Let's bust some other lies while we're here. Mad Madam Mim, Holly Cole, Keegan Newman, Jeffrey Vanderlip, and first-time question asker Mary Leo asked in their words, I grew up thinking praying mantises were endangered and only recently discovered they are not and actually never were on the endangered species list. Where did that myth come from? Are you aware of it?

Yes, I have heard this, actually. Definitely people have asked me this because I keep mantises. So they're like, oh, are any of them endangered? I think a lot of it comes from mantises just being scarce to find. Of all the insects, I think they tend to be one of the least commonly observed unless you're specifically going out to look for them. And that's, of course, because of how they are. They like to be reclusive. They like to hide. They want to stay away from the open areas because that's when they can't use their camouflage. So mantises are not endangered.

That, as we currently know, I will say there could be some potential concern for some species could be on that list, partially due to climate change, habitat destruction, and climate

the lack of taxonomic work done. But those species are in the minority, and most of the time they're not gone. They're just hiding from you and their lunch. So one of the major issues that mantises have had here, and this kind of is why people think we have so few in the United States, is we thought that mantises were not very diverse here. So just if you go back 10 years, if you rewind the taxonomic clock,

There was only about 14 species actually described in the U.S. But basically what happened in the past decade is there's been huge revival to sort of look at old taxonomic works and resample and reassess the diversity. And we're finding a lot more new species than we had previously thought. And so with that, of course, means that, OK, well, now that we thought this species, let's say species A, took up a giant range.

And now we realize it's actually species B, C, D, and E. So now it's a much more pressing concern to sort of start looking at populations of these species with regards to invasive species and habitat destruction and stuff. Okay, so that's their future. But what about their past? First time question asker, Ulia Varanos, wonders, were they ever huge and hairy?

And Kelly Toler wanted to know, were there truly giant mantids back in the days of the dinosaurs or is that a myth?

Oh, so it's weird because we actually haven't found giant mantis fossils yet. I will say it's not that they couldn't exist. The part of the problem is the mantises that tend to get preserved from the dinosaur eras in amber and stuff like that tend to be bark mantis species. But bark mimicry has evolved multiple times across the group. And with so many mantises evolving to look like tree bark, which is genius, I'm

A fossilized mantis or one trapped in amber looks like some existing species because looking like a dead leaf, that's just good business. So it's a big shrug. Because it could represent a re-evolution of that group. It could represent a really old group. And if we don't have these really giant mantises that we sometimes see here, like that size or bigger preserved, we don't know if they existed or not. So that's part of the challenge, yeah.

So should you construct a time machine to spy on giant ancient mantids, you may be disappointed. You could have just revisited your high school senior year trip to the water slides instead. But don't be sad. Everyone probably pees in those anyway. It's a bummer.

What about, Jennifer R. wanted to know what preys on a praying mantis? Does anyone eat one of them? Yeah, definitely birds, other mantises, spiders. Jumping spiders, surprisingly, are quite good at catching really big mantises. So it's weird to think about because, I mean, of course they will eat like a small nymph or something. But just because big mantises tend to be, I'll say more bold and because they tend to be

looking forward about their area versus jumping spiders, they'll, you know, they'll be looking down from a perch or something. They can get ambushed really easily. Like I've seen images of like a jumping spider from Indonesia that caught a mantis like five, six times its size and it just got it on the neck. So I was able to just get it instantly. It was incredible. So it's, it's a buggy bug world there. So yeah, it's a lot of stuff eats mantises, but yeah,

Just depends, yeah. Man, it's a battle out there. Okay. Worst thing about mantises? Worst thing about keeping them? Worst thing about being a mantis researcher and friend to mantises? What's tough? Yeah. So being the Lorax of the mantises is kind of hard. I'm growing the mustache. It's been challenging because I think

So as we were talking about, because not a lot of work has been done and there's so few people working on them actively, it's been hard to find places that will let me continue to work on them. And to no fault of any advisor, I totally understand that. But then when it comes to the research, there's...

a lot less relative to other groups of insects. And so it's navigating that has been a little bit challenging, but I mean, there are a few people. And so I've been able to find my niches as it were to continue my research along. Yeah. I'm so surprised that

Being a mantis researcher isn't like being a marine biologist. Like, I can't believe people don't just grab being like, you know what I want to be? A mantis researcher because they're so cool. You know what I mean? Yeah. I find them to be like the dolphins of the insect world. They're mysterious. What are they doing? They look weird. Yeah.

You'd think everyone would just be rushing straight to the Mantis signup desk. I would love it if people do it in 10, 15 years if I have my own lab. I would hope people do that. I totally agree. I mean, I think they're definitely calling them the charismatic microfauna, I guess. Uh-huh.

People do like mantises. But I think it's sort of because people have these preconceived notions about, oh, we don't have many here in the US. And we know they cannibalize, but that's kind of like what everyone thinks about them. And so they kind of just tend to write them off as not doing much more than that. And part of what's been really exciting for me in talking with people and being able to share the

speaking for the mantises, as it were, is to sort of show that, you know, there's these other aspects to them that people sort of are overlooking or are not privy to. And I like being able to share that with people. It's really cool. And if someone wants to become praying mantis parent, should they reach out to anywhere in particular? Is there a list of like reputable breeders or anything like that? Or is it just like if you see one out in the wild, maybe take it in for a bit?

Yeah, I know that people at like reptile shows and stuff will often have some mantises that you could get as a pet. You can always Google places that might ship pet mantises if they do like exotic species. But I myself, as someone who's kept a lot of exotic mantises in my past, and I still do, but I've really, I've

I've been really just astounded and had a great time just keeping native species. This past year, I've really tried to keep as many different native species as I could. And it's just been a really great opportunity to appreciate endemic biodiversity because I think

And I know the tropics have great wildlife. I'm not bashing on the tropics at all. But I think it's really easy to lose sight of how many beautiful animals we have here when we keep thinking about the stuff that's elsewhere. And, you know, the grass can be green on both sides. So, you know, you keep going out to some of these places and you might find something new. Never know. I know.

What about your favorite thing about them? Your favorite thing about being a scientist in this field? Oh, I'll answer as two parts. So my favorite thing about mantises, I think, is just...

how diverse they are in terms of their behavior and morphology and their life history. So being able to keep them and learn new things about them as I watch them develop and grow is always really exciting because then I can sort of, when I go into the field, then I can piece that to my sampling and that helps me navigate and find them in the environment. And about research, I think the greatest thing about research is being able to speak with people in other fields because it's

There's an infinite, a near infinite amount of knowledge. And as someone who's just generally curious, my focus is just on the stuff that I know very well, because that's the stuff I can research and answer questions about. And I like learning new things, but you know, unfortunately, as I'm sure you'll agree, it's hard to have the time to learn about everything. So being able to speak with other people about their research and what they do and having a new perspective has been really, really exciting because it's,

I think the world in general just works better when everyone's talking and communicating together and working together towards a solution. But for science, especially so, just because everyone comes at the same problem in so many different ways. And it's just sort of interesting hearing those differences. Would you have any advice for like,

anyone else who wants to get into this field? If someone's like, I want to do that. Yeah. I mean, I would say if for science, just find something that you're really passionate about. I think that's the thing that really helped me be able to stick with mantises because there was actually a point where I was considering not continuing with them, at least temporarily, just because it was hard to find positions. But I just kept

kept trying to stick with it. And, you know, eventually it worked out. But if you're really passionate about something, I mean, you'll have to spend a lot of time thinking and working with this thing that you're studying. And so if you really, really love it, it's really not going to feel like work because it's going to be so exciting. Every time you see something new, every time you

collect a new piece of data and run an analysis and start writing. It's going to be really, really exciting because you're satisfying a core curiosity that you have. And that'll just, you know, take you wherever you need to go, wherever you end up, you'll be in exactly the right place because you're doing it because you want to. That's such great advice. Like literally everyone on planet earth needs to hear that. Not just future research. Um,

I know several people wanted to know personally your favorite mantis. Looking at you, Sarah Metzger, and other pro-manted folks, including Nina Eve Zee, Felipe Jimenez, Susan Singley, and Valerie Bertha, who asked, favorite one? I know that's hard. Oh, yeah. But yeah, like, is there one that is your secret favorite?

Yeah, so it's hard to choose between 2,500 of your favorite kids. But yeah, my favorite mantis is in that genus. It's Toxodera bayeri. So that's the moss dragon mantis.

There's a lot of cool species in that genus. There's one that looks like a flower, for example. But I just always thought that that species in particular, Toxodera variae, just really encapsulated that draconic look to me. And the mossy protrusions and coloration that it has are just so intricate. It's really beautiful. It's a really beautiful animal. Have you ever had one? No, unfortunately not. No.

I wish. I mean, that's one of the mantises that I hope to see in the wild at some point in my career because they're just very, very special. They're really restricted to highland ranges in Southeast Asia. So, of course, with climate change and habitat destruction, they are very prone to potentially losing their population. And they also only have...

like a few nymphs at a time. So each egg case only has four to eight individuals and they lay maybe four in their lifetime and they grow very slow. So they're, they're really specialized and reliant on having this nice cloud forest habitat and enough butterflies to eat. And with both of those and specialists in general, just have a tough time when they,

times get tough. So I'm hoping that I can get one to see one in my lifetime. That would be amazing. And I'd probably die on the spot, but it would be totally worth it. Do you have any plans at some point to go to that region?

get your hiking boots on? Oh, I would love to. I've been really fortunate that in my career, I've been able to go to a couple different places. So I've been to Belize and more recently, I went to South America and went to Guyana. But I haven't been collecting in Asia yet. I've gone back to visit India when I was younger and have found the odd mantis and stuff, but never for a scientific expedition. And so I'd be really, really excited to go to Malaysia or Thailand and collect because, yes, this would be super exciting. Yeah.

And how can people find you in general to keep following your work or to invite you on a Mantis Safari? I will join any Safari in general, but a Mantis Safari, especially so. I'm definitely on board. My Instagram is just at Mantodiology. I guess that'll be the title of the episode anyway. So it'll be easy. And you'll find all my updates and stuff on there. I usually try to...

post macro photography, as well as research updates on what I'm doing and just stuff about mantises. So if you're interested in any of those things, you are welcome to join and chat and take what you will. I love your account. Oh, thank you. As soon as I, as soon as I saw something from you, I was like, Oh,

Within like a minute, I was like, hey, are you available? Do you want to talk this weekend? What do you do tomorrow? Are you around tomorrow? What about the day after? When you said yes, I was so excited. Oh, I was so excited too. I was like, oh my God, it's the ologies. Dolly Ward!

So ask mantis people many questions, because have you ever loved a mantid more than you do right now? I'm going to guess no. And for more on Lohit, you can find him, of course, on Instagram at Mantodiology, where he posts gorgeous photos and videos of mantids that are great to look at and also very educational, highly recommended, easy to find. It's just the title of this episode, his handle, Mantodiology. And we are at ologies there and on

I'm on platforms everywhere as Allie Ward. You can find Smologies, those shorter classroom-friendly Ologies episodes wherever you find podcasts. Just look for that colorful new logo designed by Bonnie Dutch. We also link to these kid-friendly, shorter Smologies episodes in the show notes. So please subscribe and tell your friends with kiddos who need it in its own dedicated feed without swearing. Those episodes come out on Thursdays there, but we come out on Tuesdays.

So we have Ologies merch at ologiesmerch.com. We have hats and shirts and socks. You can join Patreon at patreon.com slash ologies and submit questions for upcoming episodes, as well as join discussions with me about episodes that just came out. I love looking at your comments and writing back.

Thank you to Aaron Talbert, who admins Theology's podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malick in the word of remakes her professional transcripts. Callie R. Dwyer does the website. Noelle Dilworth is our scheduling producer. Susan Hale is our managing director. Jake Chafee edits. Huge thanks to Jared Sleeper, who gifted me Mirabelle the mantis and made me love mantids forever. And another keeper is lead editor Mercedes Maitland of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music. And if you stick around until the end, I tell you a secret. And one secret is...

Let's hear it. Speaking of my yard and the things that live in it, there's this one grasshopper, like a big chonker, like two, three inches long. And it hangs out on the screen of the window in the living room. And we'll see it for like a week at a time. It'll just be on the screen. And we know it's the same one because it's missing a leg.

And we don't know why it's just hanging out on the screen, just clinging to it all day. It'll be back the next day. Sometimes it'll be gone for a week and then back. I need to talk to a grasshopper person to tell me, is this the same one? It's gotta be the same one. Is it hanging out on the screen door because it lost its leg in a valiant battle? Do we just have an awesome screen door? I don't know what's going on with it. And I haven't seen it in a few days. And that makes me sad. Also in my office,

I have so many spiders. I love every single one of them. I counted seven webs the last time around. You know what they eat for me? All kinds of bugs. I'm not in there with any raid, I'll tell you that much. I got spiders for that. I outsourced it. I'm not pest control. It's a buffet in there and I wouldn't have it any other way. Anyway, say hi to your bugs, okay? I love them too. Bye-bye. Hackadermatology. Cryptozoology. Nanotechnology. Meteorology.

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