#mantishenanigans

[crevicedwelling]

here’s an interesting female Chinese mantis I found hanging out in a porcelainberry patch. the yellow neck and green body is a very common color morph in males, but this is the first female I’ve seen who wasn’t a fully green or brown morph. she’s rather tiny for a T. sinensis too

she also had “heterochromia,” with one eye a bluer shade of green than the other (doubt anything about this term applies to a compound eye, but what else would you call it?)

I wonder if I’ll see her again in the few weeks she’s got left, certainly a very distinctive individual

[crevicedwelling]

so yesterday I mentioned how male mantises often try to mate with the wrong species since I’d seen a male Tenodera sinensis checking out a mating Mantis religiosa pair.

well today I found a Mantis with two Tenodera males on her!

she was hardly able to move with the weight of both of them! in the first pic the males are only stepping on her, she’s holding both up with her super mantis strength

[crevicedwelling]

heterochromantis update: she’s attracted two suitors, one green, one brown.

I wonder which, or both, will muster the courage to jump on her back, and if either will get eaten (she’s young and slim, so likely very hungry). I’ll check back in an hour or so, although I don’t expect anything to happen since these standoffs can last all day

[crevicedwelling]

forbidden love: Romeo, Juliet, and Fred.

two mistaken Tenodera sinensis males attempting to mate with a female Mantis religiosa

while the two species could likely not hybridize due to their genitalia being incompatible, these photos made me realize the males’ rears are overshooting hers by a good inch—they can’t even get there in the first place. Tenodera are really big mantises, even the males! photos also show the black wounds in her wings from the males’ too-large raptorial claws cutting through

[crevicedwelling]

what’s this Chinese mantis (Tenodera sinensis) male looking at?

a mating pair of European mantises (Mantis religiosa)! it’s likely he was sizing up the female as a potential mate and not prey—males don’t often attack large prey items but very frequently attempt mating with anything that looks or smells like a female.

I borrowed the couple to move them somewhere private. I don’t often see Mantis around here, so even though they’re not native I wouldn’t mind having a few more mantises that aren’t (the also invasive) T. sinensis.