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Praying Mantis is a formidable predator which hunts by keeping
very still, blending in with the background and holding its long,
heavily armed front legs up close to its head. It looks, to
some people at least, as if it is praying, perhaps praying for its
next meal to come closer.
One of the more bizarre features of
some mantid species is the mating ritual which ends with the
female devouring the male in a rather grotesque honeymoon
feast. Many Australian children, who have kept a pair of
mantids, have woken in the morning to find only one animal and a
pair of wing cases on the floor of the cage. Most kids are
quite distressed by this sight and most parents misinterpret the
reason for their distress. For for it is usually not the loss of
the male insect that has upset them but rather the fact that they
missed the spectacle.
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