What are the characteristics of mantis?

Mantis's front feet are like a big knife held high by thugs, so it is also called "knife mantis" in some areas. It is a slow-moving insect with a big belly and a round waist. Mantis is not as flexible as locusts, crickets and other insects that fly with wings. Even compared with Guo Guo, it seems a bit clumsy. In fact, mantis is not stupid, and its ability to catch other insects is very high. Mantis can skillfully prey on cicadas, locusts, flies, butterflies, grasshoppers and other insects. Therefore, mantis is a beneficial insect.

Mantis's head is triangular, with a wide top and a narrow bottom. Its neck and chest are thin and long, which can be compared with the giraffe's long neck. There are jagged spines on both sides of the neck, which are the protective "armor" of the neck. Its neck is very flexible, and it can swing back and forth, left and right freely, which is conducive to observing food and monitoring the whereabouts of insects and preventing them from slipping away unconsciously.

In order to find food conveniently, mantis's eyes are born at both ends of the triangular head and protrude outward, so its vision is particularly broad. But its vision is not keen, no matter how far away, its vision is always blurred. One of the characteristics of mantis eyes is that it can't see static things, but only moving things. Therefore, no matter what color, shape or flexibility the mantis wants to grasp, it can see anything that moves. If you feed the mantis with dead flies, it won't notice; But a half-dead fly, as long as it struggles, mantis will catch it and eat it.

On the slender chest of mantis, there are a pair of very developed and powerful front legs, which look like two sickles. These front feet are very powerful, and their tips are sharper than steel needles. There are many sharp steel thorns on the inside of the front foot, which is very suitable for firmly clamping the caught insects in the front foot bend. As long as the bug is caught by it, you can't escape.

Mantis is a carnivorous insect, that is, an insect that specializes in eating other insects. If a bug accidentally meets a mantis in the grass, it is undoubtedly a catastrophe.

When mantis catches worms; Just like a hunter chasing a wild animal, he pursues it. Sometimes it's like a fisherman fishing, waiting for the fish to bite. When it hides in the dark and attentively monitors the insects to be caught, it slowly moves its slender hind legs and gently approaches the insects, even the leaves it stands on don't tremble, so that the insects can't be detected. It's really "elusive".

When mantis is ready to catch bees and butterflies, its "tactic" is to hide behind flowers and leave them in an "ambush position". At this time, it will erect its upper body, lift its sickle-shaped front foot, wait patiently for a few minutes or even dozens of minutes, and then jump up when bees and butterflies approach. Mantis ambush posture, like a pious prayer. Therefore, in German, mantis is also called "the believing woman who prays". When mantis catches insects, its small three-horned head keeps swinging and staring at each other to prevent them from escaping. Sometimes it is a little far away from the insect to be caught, and mantis will jump up to catch the insect without waiting for the insect to get close.

When catching large insects such as cicadas and grasshoppers, mantis will try its best to suddenly wave sickle-like front legs and try to chop them hard at each other. This move really overwhelmed the other side, and he died before he struggled. Mantis will soon have a rich and delicious meal. Mantis's choice of food has one condition, and that is to live. As long as it is a live bug, it will be eaten when caught, and it will never be "choosy". Therefore, even your own "family" and "younger generation" must always pay attention, otherwise, there is a danger of being eaten.

Mantis's small mouth, born under a triangular head, shrinks from top to bottom. Its two "big teeth" are strong and hard.

In order to catch insects and confuse each other, mantis also has an unusual skill, that is, its color will change with the color of leaves in the surrounding vegetation. In summer, the vegetation is green, and mantis is green at this time; In autumn, leaves wither and turn yellow, and mantis turns yellow-brown.

Autumn is a good day for mantis to get married. Getting married should be a happy event, but in mantis's world, "getting married" means that mantis will be in big trouble. When they get married, the male mantis will be killed by the female mantis. So in the world of mantis, "marriage" means the end of the male mantis's life.

Eating male mantis by female mantis is a very famous episode in insect ecology. If the food consumed by the female mantis contains extremely sufficient protein, it is unnecessary for the female mantis to eat the male mantis. However, in the natural environment, the protein that the female mantis needs physiologically is not enough by the insects it can catch. In order to lay full eggs and cultivate strong offspring, the female mantis must eat at least four to five times the protein of the male mantis in order to satisfy the nutrition it needs. Although the mother mantis was so "strong", she died of exhaustion after laying eggs. It can be said that they all gave their lives for the next generation!

The body of the male mantis becomes the food for the female mantis after pregnancy. After the female mantis supplemented protein, at the end of 10, she produced an egg bag about four or five centimeters long and two or three centimeters thick on the branches or grass, which was called the egg sheath mantis. Interestingly, when the female mantis lays eggs, the posture of laying eggs is different from that of other creatures. Mantis lays eggs with its head down and its abdomen up. It discharges soft fluid foam from the tail tip, and the eggs are wrapped inside. Soon after the fluid foam is discharged, it solidifies into a hard block and becomes a cylinder with horizontal wrinkles on the surface. The inside is divided into many compartments by a film, and there are about 30 eggs in each compartment. Eggs are covered with countless small bubbles, which are like rigid foam after solidification, which is both cold-proof and shock-proof. The female mantis lays eggs once, and if it can hatch smoothly, it can hatch hundreds of little mantis.

Next rainy season, the little mantis begins to hatch and be born. The newly hatched mantis has the same appearance and habits as the Hwa-Sung Do mantis except that it has no wings. You grow up after molting for five times. In order to grow up healthily, these little mantis must eat a lot and absorb protein as much as possible. The future mantis has developed living habits since childhood.

When mantis was a larva, it used aphids to feed its hunger. With the development of the body, the food it catches has gradually escalated, from catching flies and bees to catching bigger insects such as butterflies and cicadas to satisfy its hunger. Its appetite is one of the best among insects.

Mantis belongs to tropical insects, and its boundary is 53 degrees north latitude. Mantis, which grows in tropical South Africa, is huge and fierce, and sometimes climbs trees to kill young birds. Children born in mantis kingdom like to catch mantis to play. Children in South Africa tied mantis's neck with a string and fed it lice, so South Africa called it a "lice eater". When preparing to catch insects, mantis held its pair of sickles high, as if it were a pilgrimage to Mecca, so people in the Arab region respected mantis and protected it.

Although mantis and cockroach look different, we can see that they have many similarities when we look closely. Generally speaking, mantis is a carnivorous group belonging to the branch of cockroach. Therefore, scientists believe that the ancestors of mantis appeared on the earth as early as the Carboniferous more than 300 million years ago. This theory has been endorsed by many scholars.

Although mantis is very strong, it also has powerful enemies. Some fierce carnivorous birds are its enemies. Even ants can't cope with the injured mantis. There is also a wasp larva, which can parasitize mantis eggs and is the enemy of mantis eggs, and can destroy all the eggs in the eggs.

Mantis is a non-selective carnivorous insect. Among the insects it catches, it sometimes eats some insects that are beneficial to human beings, but according to the observation of scientists, the insects it catches are mostly pests, so it is listed as beneficial insects. Therefore, we should protect mantis.