In reference to
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mmantis.html,
I’m going to go crazy remembering where I heard this, but I recently heard that observation of praying mantises in the wild shows that the females do not usually kill the males after mating. This behavior is mostly seen with captured mantises, who don’t like the container life.
Like I said, I don’t remember where, but it was a reputable source.
No, really.
I read the same thing this week, and the only possible sources for this information based on my recent reading are this MB, the newspaper, and Natural History magazine.
Compare this to your reading habits and you’ll find your answer. BTW, I found the article to be very convincing, based on an actual reasearch study.
Well, I read two online newspapers (NYT/
Wash Post), and some days I buy the Chicago
Tribune.
A search at the NYT and Washington Post sites
found nothing.
I don’t think I read it here.
My guess is I heard a radio news station,
reporting on what some newspaper was
reporting.
Yeah.
Or, try the Archives:
Does Mrs Mantis bite Mr Mantis’s head off during the act?
Cecil’s comment, in brief, is that being in the stressful situation (cage, lab, etc) seems to increase the likelihood, but that this is clearly a behaviour in the wilds, as well.
Snopes! That’s where I saw it!
Thank you, Manda Jo.
With my mantis, the female was well-fed with crickets (one theory at snopes said some captives weren’t and that could motivate them to consume their mates). Also, she didn’t eat him during sex, but after he had disengaged.
Those Snopes pieces appeared right around the same time my mailbag column was posted. Hm.
Jill
Isn’t the plural of mantis “mantids”?
ben
A little off topic but,
How come praying mantises were banned from being in insect colletions in high school? My biology teacher never bothered to say why.
The plural is mantes or mantises.
Mantid is the word used to identify the entire family in the Linnaean system.
Louie asked: “How come praying mantises were banned from being in insect colletions in high school? My biology teacher never bothered to say why.”
She evidently heard the Urban Legend about it being illegal to kill them. It was not true then, is not true now.
Also, as pointed out, “mantis” is a common name, while “mantid” is a technical name. Originally, there was only one family, Mantidae, at which point the two names were synonymous. Now, however, there are 8 families, so not all mantises are mantids any more.
I agree with Doug about the illegal to kill mantids UL. FWIW, I was told by an entomology professor (some time ago) that the only species of insect protected by law anywhere (in the U.S.) was the Monarch Butterfly; it’s a tourist attraction in some parts.
No, sadly, there are lots of insects who are protected by law against being killed. High on the list is the litterbug, for instance, and incredibly dangerous and obnoxious pest. But shoot one, even one that you catch in the act, and the cops get all over you.
There are plenty of insects protected by either the Endangered Species Act or various state environmental agencies. Most of these species are butterflies, but one very controversial listing is the federally endangered Dehli Sands flower-loving fly (which looks quite a bit like a horsefly). This fly is native to Southern California and its presence has stopped the development of several structures, including a hospital.
BTW, my sixth grade class (this would have been around 1980 or so) had lots of little mantises we hatched out of an egg sac. IIRC, we ordered the egg sac from a science education distributor.
[[I agree with Doug about the illegal to kill mantids UL. FWIW, I was told by an entomology professor (some time ago) that the only species of insect protected by law anywhere (in the U.S.) was the Monarch Butterfly; it’s a tourist attraction in some parts.]]
If it is illegal to kill the butterflies, what about the caterpillars?
Divemaster wrote:
“There are plenty of insects protected by either the Endangered Species Act or various state environmental agencies. Most of these species are butterflies, but one very controversial listing is the federally endangered Dehli[sic] Sands flower-loving fly (which looks quite a bit like a horsefly). This fly is native to Southern California and its presence has stopped the development of several structures, including a hospital.”
The Delhi Sands Flower-Loving Fly did not in fact stop the hospital. I’ve seen the hospital, and the patch of dunes across the street from it, that has what may be the only viable remaining population of this fly. All that happened was that the hospital had to be moved a few hundred feet, but that naturally required that a ton of blueprints and such had to be thrown out the window, which is why it cost so much money. The fly will probably be extinct within 20 years, as the developers get bolder in their challenges - including things like letting sheep loose on the property to defoliate it, or plowing it when no one is watching. Then they simply dare the Fish & Wildlife Service to try to prosecute them - as if the USFWS had that kind of money for lawyers.
Jill wrote:
“If it is illegal to kill the butterflies, what about the caterpillars?”
It should also be illegal (goodness only knows why - the Monarch is one of the LAST insects in this hemisphere that will ever go extinct), but how are you gonna prove it and enforce it? It’s not as if people take the caterpillars and put them in their bug collections. You need evidence to prosecute.
[[It should also be illegal (goodness only knows why - the Monarch is one of the LAST insects in this hemisphere that will ever go extinct), but how are you gonna prove it and enforce it? It’s not as if people take the caterpillars and put them in their bug collections. You need evidence to prosecute.]]
Most people, when they see any evidence of caterpillars eating their gardens, use pesticides pretty broadly. Monarch 'pillars eat milkweed, but my guess is that a lot of them are killed in the crossfire.
FYI:
The 13 November 1999 issue of Science News had an article titled “Who’s Dyuing for Sex?”
Unfortunately, they don’t have the full text of the article on-line.
The second part of the article states that Michael R. Maxwell, then at the University of California, Davis (and now at the University of California, San Diego), discovered that in California mantids (the bordered mantid and the Mediterranean mantid) the female eats the male about 20 percent of the time. In those species, the male tries to avoid being eaten but is not always successfull.
Evolutionary benefit? One theory is that more aggressive females (those that attack first, fast and furiously) get more food and grow larger, enabling them to live longer, so that very aggressive behaviour is a survival trait.
La franchise ne consiste pas à dire tout ce que l’on pense, mais à penser tout ce que l’on dit.
H. de Livry