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Speaker 4: Oh hey, it's that skin on the top of your
Speaker 4: cold hot chocolate.
Speaker 1: I'm Ali Ward.
Speaker 4: This is Ologies, and if you missed last week's Minnesota announcement, okay,
Speaker 4: So our shorter kid friendly episodes they're called Smologies. It's
Speaker 4: its own show. We launched another show. It has its
Speaker 4: own feed. You can subscribe to Smologies. Anywhere you find podcasts.
Speaker 4: You can look for this colorful new logo with a
Speaker 4: bird and a frog on it. Tell everyone you know
Speaker 4: who needs podcasts for the littler ones or work where
Speaker 4: we don't swear. We keep it classroom safe. So that's Smologies.
Speaker 4: But this is Ologies, which means we talk about the
Speaker 4: weirder stuff. That's the way I like it. So this week,
Speaker 4: it's a long time love of mine. It's Mantis. It's
Speaker 4: Mantis's We're gonna figure it out. I met this guest
Speaker 4: via Instagram and within a minute of seeing his page,
Speaker 4: I messaged I begged him to talk to me. Thirty
Speaker 4: six hours later he was recording this and my life
Speaker 4: is better for it. So he graduated from UC Davis
Speaker 4: and entomology and is now getting his master's at Toastin
Speaker 4: University in Maryland, with a PhD up next on his list,
Speaker 4: but already has two published papers and is known in
Speaker 4: entomology circles as a mantis expert. When a mantis expert
Speaker 4: is quoted in the media, there's a good chance it's him.
Speaker 4: He's been studying and keeping mantises for fifteen years and
Speaker 4: even has the handle mentodiology on Instagram. Legit, So we're
Speaker 4: going to chat with him and if you but first,
Speaker 4: thank you patrons for supporting the show at patreon dot
Speaker 4: com slash ologies and making this possible. You can join
Speaker 4: for one hot dollar a month. Thank you to folks
Speaker 4: in ologies merch, which is linked in the show notes,
Speaker 4: and we will repost pictures of you in it by
Speaker 4: tagging hashtagologies merch, so please take us with you this summer.
Speaker 4: And thank you to everyone who leaves reviews, which helped
Speaker 4: the show so much. I read every single one usually
Speaker 4: it's great. If you want proof fine. Thank you to
Speaker 4: Claire Rose Wrights, who listens when getting all their little
Speaker 4: chores done and says brava to Ali and team. You
Speaker 4: are my favorite dad. Also, thanks for making smologies its
Speaker 4: own show page. We love that for you and for us,
Speaker 4: So yes your Internet dad. Thanks each and every reviewer,
Speaker 4: and yes, smolo Jesus is his own show link in
Speaker 4: the show it's exciting. Also, thank you for the one
Speaker 4: star review, Cloudy two g who says thank you ologies
Speaker 4: is my favorite podcast. I appreciate those words, Cloudy Tug,
Speaker 4: even though I think you met five stars and not one.
Speaker 4: But that's okay, it happens, Okay. Mantotiology coined by an
Speaker 4: actual expert and now a real word, and you will
Speaker 4: find it used in mantid forums, usually talking about him
Speaker 4: because he knows a lot. So the word mantis, Oh,
Speaker 4: this has such a good history, so surprising. I figured
Speaker 4: man came from manus like hand, but no, No, Mantis
Speaker 4: comes from the Greek for a seer or a soothsayer
Speaker 4: or a prophet, which came from earlier Greek meaning to
Speaker 4: be inspired, and that route comes from passion and thinking.
Speaker 4: It has the same etymology as words like museum and
Speaker 4: mentor and mania, mantis mania. It all comes from the
Speaker 4: same place. So we're going to go more into their
Speaker 4: mythology as well, but for now, talk in. Get your
Speaker 4: appetite up for chatter about their evolution, barbed arms, how
Speaker 4: they hunt, sexual cannibalism, diving heads first into breakfast, mantis motherhood,
Speaker 4: their alien egg cases, huge eyes, what common pets they
Speaker 4: act like, if you should keep one as a pet,
Speaker 4: invasive mantis's manted versus mantis, whether they actually eat hummingbirds
Speaker 4: or if that was an Internet hoax, and why they
Speaker 4: can show you the Way to Hell with entomologist researcher,
Speaker 4: manted keeper Absolute Pleasure and mentodiologist low Heat Garrick A.
Speaker 1: Potti. I was like, I want to go.
Speaker 5: They're so bad.
Speaker 1: I want to do so bad. I've never been to
Speaker 1: an asmology grand Friends.
Speaker 5: That was actually my first one. It was a lot
Speaker 5: of fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh I would have I don't know, I would
Speaker 1: have died. I mean they're all there, right, They're like
Speaker 1: the ant people and the wasp people and the you know,
Speaker 1: butterfly people.
Speaker 5: It was honestly overwhelming. It's like when you have a
Speaker 5: big menu at a good restaurant. There's so many options
Speaker 5: we want to see you can't pick.
Speaker 1: And Oh, first, I'll also have you say your first
Speaker 1: and last name in your pronouns. I forgot to that.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, my name is lohiit Gherka Patti.
Speaker 5: I go by him pronouns. Yeah, mantis is are cool.
Speaker 1: How long have you been a bug nerd.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that is the technical term that I tend to use. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I've been into bugs ever since I was like five
Speaker 5: or six. It's sort of been like a lifelong thing
Speaker 5: for me. I was initially really into dinosaurs and then
Speaker 5: they kind of just sort of split into other nature
Speaker 5: things and bugs are just always around, so they're really
Speaker 5: easy to observe and sort of, you know, play away with,
Speaker 5: keep his pets whatever.
Speaker 1: Did you have a gateway bug that got you from
Speaker 1: dinosaurs to bugs in general? Was it manted or was
Speaker 1: it like tarantula or something?
Speaker 5: Oh, it was actually funny you mentioned spiders. I'll circle
Speaker 5: back to it, but it was actually lady bugs to
Speaker 5: start off with. I actually did a science fair project
Speaker 5: on lead bug life cycles and I sort of had
Speaker 5: been collecting them outside our apartment and you know, just
Speaker 5: find them on grass. I was like, oh, they must
Speaker 5: be eating grass. Of course, most people probably listening to
Speaker 5: know that they do not eat grass, and so that
Speaker 5: experiment did not end up going well. But what it
Speaker 5: did do is it prompted me to go to the
Speaker 5: local library and do some research on their life cycle.
Speaker 5: And then, you know, knowing that the eat aphids and things,
Speaker 5: like that. I was able to actually rear them through
Speaker 5: through one year of their life cycle, and that was
Speaker 5: super exciting, and that kind of really set me down
Speaker 5: this path of insect keeping.
Speaker 4: We spoke over video chat and behind him was like
Speaker 4: a baker's rack filled with tidy, white netted enclosures, each
Speaker 4: with a cherished book or two.
Speaker 5: You can kind of see this is my room, a
Speaker 5: lot of stuff. So he Yeah, Captive observation has been
Speaker 5: really really exciting for me. I think it's a great
Speaker 5: opportunity to stay sort of connected with nature. But then
Speaker 5: you get to see all these all these things that
Speaker 5: they do that you might not normally be privy to,
Speaker 5: because I mean, most of the time it's hard to
Speaker 5: find some of these insects. You know, they're small, or
Speaker 5: they're just well camouflaged, like our mantises, and so getting
Speaker 5: to see them in captivity, you get to see really
Speaker 5: special stuff.
Speaker 1: I hadn't thought about that, about how much of the
Speaker 1: behavior you'd have to be really right place, right time
Speaker 1: to ever catch. And what about mantids in particular. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you know this about me, but I
Speaker 1: did have a pet mantis. Her name was Mirabel, and
Speaker 1: oh she loved mealworms more than anything. And this was
Speaker 1: in my thirties and like, not when I was six.
Speaker 1: This was like, yeah, not that long ago. When she died,
Speaker 1: we had an open casket funeral for her and oh,
Speaker 1: my friend's all dressed in black and wore veils and stuff.
Speaker 1: For the curious, you can head to Instagram and look
Speaker 1: up the hashtag rip rang mantis. She's gone, but she's
Speaker 1: not forgotten. Well, she's not really gone either. I guess
Speaker 1: I still have her in a little box. But yeah,
Speaker 1: shere's my buddy I'm missing. But yeah, why mantids.
Speaker 5: I think your story is a good example. I think
Speaker 5: they're just really charismatic. I mean, even for in sex
Speaker 5: in general. I like, it's hard for me to pick
Speaker 5: a specific thing because people always ask me this, why
Speaker 5: do you like mantas' so much? And I think there's
Speaker 5: a lot of things that they do that I think
Speaker 5: people don't really realize that they do, from mating displays
Speaker 5: to maternal care. And we can talk more about that later,
Speaker 5: but I think part of in keeping them, I've gotten
Speaker 5: to see some of this stuff and it's really been like,
Speaker 5: oh wow, that's another thing that I like. That's another
Speaker 5: thing that I like. I think the thing that really
Speaker 5: got me into Mantus's in the first place is probably
Speaker 5: a thing that a lot of people think is cool
Speaker 5: about them as they're hunting. I've probably watched in my
Speaker 5: lifetime now like hundreds and thousands of strikes, and it's
Speaker 5: still super exciting to watch it. Every time you give
Speaker 5: them prey and then they go stock it and go
Speaker 5: catch it. So I think definitely that got me into them.
Speaker 1: It's very exciting, like watching an apex predator take down
Speaker 1: an antelope and you're like, that's horrifying, but it's all nature.
Speaker 1: It's a circle of life. But like with a very
Speaker 1: small tiger and a maggot, I think, what do they
Speaker 1: tend to eat? Do you feed them like mealworms and crickets?
Speaker 5: I actually I feed them cockroaches blad alatter alice cockroaches.
Speaker 5: They're great because they can't climb plastic, so it makes
Speaker 5: it really easy to deal with them for feeding. So
Speaker 5: I just tossed them in the container and they can't
Speaker 5: escape from the container that they're in because crickets jump
Speaker 5: and they make noise. So I've kind of straight away
Speaker 5: from them over time. But in the wild fantasies eat
Speaker 5: a lot of different stuff. I mean, you have species
Speaker 5: that specialize is on nectar feeding and sex in general,
Speaker 5: like you know, the orchid mantis. Everyone knows super well,
Speaker 5: well for the.
Speaker 4: People whose algorithm is not filled with macro bug photography.
Speaker 4: I don't know what your life is like, but an
Speaker 4: orchid mantis is like a Barbie pink and white insects
Speaker 4: about half the size of your thumb, and it does
Speaker 4: an uncanny impression of a jungle blossom. But unlike an orchid,
Speaker 4: they are thirsty for killing.
Speaker 5: There's species that specialize on butterflies, so they sort of
Speaker 5: have a pretty unique hunting strategy with them. There's ants specialists,
Speaker 5: and then you have species that kind of are more
Speaker 5: generalists and the like, you know, pretty much anything that
Speaker 5: they can really grab or get their raptorial fore legs around.
Speaker 5: And some of the bigger species even eat vertebrates, So
Speaker 5: I mean they're all over the ecological chain.
Speaker 1: I don't understand how that's possible because there's I know,
Speaker 1: there's a viral video that's gone around or of a
Speaker 1: mantis catching and starting to eat a hummingbird, which is
Speaker 1: like giant that's like, we have a sandwich is the
Speaker 1: size of a car. Why would I need that much?
Speaker 1: How do they do it?
Speaker 5: The short answer is they're just very strong, and I
Speaker 5: think they really rely on being able to surprise their
Speaker 5: prey because mantises are strong. But I think in a
Speaker 5: straight up fight they really rely on being able to
Speaker 5: grab and lock down the insect or prey from it moving,
Speaker 5: and then just getting a couple of good bites in
Speaker 5: that can kind of subdue it for the most part,
Speaker 5: because they have to start eating it while it's alive.
Speaker 5: I don't have any venom or anything like that. So yeah,
Speaker 5: they're a lot like big cats in that way. They
Speaker 5: really just need the ambush to try and overpower their prey,
Speaker 5: otherwise it'll potentially get away.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to think of a mant to being like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm stuffed, I'll move on. But then they don't know
Speaker 1: leftovers though, right they don't do leftovers.
Speaker 5: No, usually not. Mantises are pretty I'll say that they're picky.
Speaker 5: They really like the juicy bits of stuff, so they
Speaker 5: tend to leave little If it's like very like the
Speaker 5: ends of insect legs or wings, they really don't like those,
Speaker 5: so that the start them It's really funny because when
Speaker 5: you watch them eat, like a fly or something. You'll
Speaker 5: see them eat. They get to the wings and they
Speaker 5: like take a couple of bites, They're like, h nah,
Speaker 5: and then they just spit it out. Basically, I don't
Speaker 5: like these So they can be a bit picky, but
Speaker 5: real eat almost anything.
Speaker 1: Legs just like pizza crusts, like.
Speaker 5: Every Yeah, only the finest for them. They only like
Speaker 5: the finest morsels of food.
Speaker 1: How many mantids do you have? Do you keep?
Speaker 5: Uh? Presently? I think the number is close to one hundred,
Speaker 5: and just sort of fluctuates depending on how many nymphs
Speaker 5: I end up having from eggs hatching or adults and
Speaker 5: stuff like that. So it just varies.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess we should or I should actually established
Speaker 1: technically speaking, what is it manted.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so there's roughly twenty five hundred currently described species.
Speaker 5: They tend up triangular heads a couple of the features
Speaker 5: of the group, or that they have a specialized cleaning
Speaker 5: brush on their fore legs. So when you see mantiss
Speaker 5: do that cat like cleaning motion, they actually have a
Speaker 5: brush there that's gathering off all the bits of dirt
Speaker 5: and stuff from things they've eaten or collected just to
Speaker 5: clean their heads off. So that's unique to mantus's. No
Speaker 5: other insect has like a centralized brush like that just
Speaker 5: for cleaning. Oh, just pretty cool.
Speaker 4: I needed to know what this was called because I
Speaker 4: hoped it was like a micro scruffle or like a
Speaker 4: little facy, scratchy sketch. But according to the twenty seventeen
Speaker 4: study Manual of Praying Mantis Morphology, Nomenclature and Practices, it's
Speaker 4: called a femoral brush and it's a small patch of
Speaker 4: hair like projections on the front of the forelimb. And
Speaker 4: I googled images.
Speaker 1: I was like, what are we.
Speaker 4: Talking here, and under my croscopy it looks like if
Speaker 4: you had a goatee on your wrist and you used
Speaker 4: it to get croissant flakes off of your head. Ten
Speaker 4: out of ten sexy. Speaking of baby making, they.
Speaker 5: Tend to lay uthiki, or that's what we call their
Speaker 5: egg cases. They're often foamy coverings to protect the eggs,
Speaker 5: and those can be in a variety of different shapes.
Speaker 5: There's some that look like cotton candy, there's some that
Speaker 5: look like little galls, So super variable there, and they
Speaker 5: tend to have they have asymmetrical genitalia. I don't know
Speaker 5: if people are interested in that. Tidmit that it's sort
Speaker 5: of weird for insects.
Speaker 1: I mean, of course we always bug junk talk as
Speaker 1: to walk.
Speaker 5: Come here, DoD junk is great, it's weird.
Speaker 1: That's like one of the ways you can tell a
Speaker 1: male from a female, right is looking at the tip
Speaker 1: of their butt.
Speaker 5: Mm hmm, yeah, that's it's a great way. Mantisters are
Speaker 5: what we call like sexually dimorphic, right, So males often
Speaker 5: are skinnier and they tend to have very long antennae,
Speaker 5: bigger eyes for their head size, and the females and
Speaker 5: then yeah, you can look at the end of their
Speaker 5: abdomen until really easily because the females will have a
Speaker 5: point which is their opa positor coming out the bottom,
Speaker 5: and the males just have this cup like shape but
Speaker 5: it's just modified in a different way to house the insect.
Speaker 1: Junk is an what is a mantistick called what.
Speaker 5: We'd call it the genitalia, But there's three main pieces
Speaker 5: or fallomere is what we call them in the mantis situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, need more info? So did me?
Speaker 2: So?
Speaker 4: I found the paper Functional Morphology of the Praying Mantis
Speaker 4: Male Genitalia, which starts with an absolute banger of an
Speaker 4: opening sentence. The diversity of genitalia in the animal world
Speaker 4: is difficult to overstate, indeed, and it continues to describe
Speaker 4: that mantis copulation is divided into three phases. There's opening, anchoring,
Speaker 4: and deposition essentially foreplay, the nasty, and the finish. And
Speaker 4: the first stage involves opening the female subgenital plate and
Speaker 4: the mantodiologists involved in the study observed multiple cases of
Speaker 4: female cooperation or resistance, with one case of coercion by
Speaker 4: the male, and once the loading dock is open, though
Speaker 4: a clamp on the male's right fallomere maintains this tight
Speaker 4: grasp on the ladies' privates and the paper delivers some
Speaker 4: details of some quote rhythmic motions which stimulate the female
Speaker 4: as well as the male, but also serve to remove
Speaker 4: any rivals depositions. As long as they're in there, they're
Speaker 4: just gonna clean up a bit.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 4: Females have a tip at the end of their abdomen,
Speaker 4: and this is their digging and their egg laying poker.
Speaker 4: It's called an ovipositor and in general, they have larger
Speaker 4: bodies and a thicker, wider abdomen. That's how you can
Speaker 4: spot them. They use that to carry all those little
Speaker 4: eggs to make more mantids or mantises. Okay, and mantis
Speaker 4: or mantid, what's the proper way.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so this is a this is a good question.
Speaker 5: So mantids is historically correct. So mantis is as whole
Speaker 5: used to be considered one family. So they're man today
Speaker 5: within the order Dictioptera, but now Dictioptera is a super
Speaker 5: order and Mantis's order Mantodia, their own order, and Man
Speaker 5: today is still a valid family that refers to one
Speaker 5: of the twenty seven recognized currently recognized families. So if
Speaker 5: you say mantids, people usually know that you're talking about mantises.
Speaker 5: But in a taxonomic sense, mantises would be more correct
Speaker 5: for the whole order, Mantids would be for the singular family.
Speaker 1: If you're like, well, you lost me at all those words,
Speaker 1: don't worry about it. There's not going to be a quiz.
Speaker 4: Essentially, it's just gone back and forth with this huge
Speaker 4: update in twenty nineteen, and probably people have been in
Speaker 4: a conference room crying and fighting about this but the
Speaker 4: latest is that mantises, of which there are around twenty
Speaker 4: five hundred recognized species, belong to the order Mantodia, and
Speaker 4: mantids are in a family below that. So not all
Speaker 4: mantises are mantids, but all mantids are mantises, and it's confusing.
Speaker 4: Manted is now a more narrow group than mantises, even
Speaker 4: though it.
Speaker 1: Used to be kind of reversed.
Speaker 4: So if you're feeling confused, you're an amazing company, even
Speaker 4: among mantodiologists. Absolutely zero yelling at me about this is
Speaker 4: going to be tolerated. Twenty five hundred species of mantises,
Speaker 4: and they range from grassy greens to pink to brown,
Speaker 4: with bodies that are spiky or leaflike. There are stick
Speaker 4: mantids with pointy heads, cobra mantises with one wide fin
Speaker 4: on their shoulders behind their head. They're these cream colored
Speaker 4: spiny flower mantises whose abdomens are spiked with these yellow points,
Speaker 4: and then when their wings are out, they look like
Speaker 4: they have two mustard colored owl eyes. There are other
Speaker 4: mantids like stagmo mantis limp that might be opallescent or
Speaker 4: look like a drab camo parka that your cousin would
Speaker 4: wear on a deer hunt. There's this huge Devil's flower mantis,
Speaker 4: which can be up to five inches in length. There
Speaker 4: are ghostly white mantises, and even this gorgeous maybe my favorite.
Speaker 4: I don't know if I have a favorite, but maybe
Speaker 4: my favorite Metalli Takas splendidus, which lives underneath bark and
Speaker 4: is this metallic green and blue color like a new car,
Speaker 4: with brassy amber wings that look like they're made of copper.
Speaker 4: So much diversity and yet so much similarity your academic
Speaker 4: background or your hobbyist turned business background, Like, can you
Speaker 4: tell me a little bit about how you narrowed your
Speaker 4: focus to mantises and like where you're at with it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So, for the longest time, I actually wasn't even
Speaker 5: thinking about doing academic research. I mean I came into
Speaker 5: my undergrad not really sure exactly what I wanted to do.
Speaker 5: I wanted to do some thing with life sciences. I
Speaker 5: just always liked mantises and keeping them as a hobby,
Speaker 5: and so in that sense, I was interested in them
Speaker 5: from a purely hobby perspective. I enjoyed like the raising
Speaker 5: new species and sort of learning about them. In that sense.
Speaker 5: And part of it also was my parents weren't really
Speaker 5: at the time. They were like, oh, I don't know,
Speaker 5: like a career in insects, is that like early a thing?
Speaker 5: And so they had like some skepticism. But then I
Speaker 5: did my undergrad at UC Davis and I got to
Speaker 5: be a part of the Beauhart Museum of Entomology, which
Speaker 5: is really great, really great group of folks. And then
Speaker 5: through there I got really introduced to entomology as an
Speaker 5: academic discipline, and so I learned about, you know, the
Speaker 5: taxonomy of the different insect groups, had identified different insect groups,
Speaker 5: and then it was kind of a lock and key situation.
Speaker 5: I worked there for one summer and I was like, yeah,
Speaker 5: this is great. I really want to really want to
Speaker 5: do this. And it was nice because in addition to
Speaker 5: doing whatever I need to do for the museum, I
Speaker 5: actually got to work on curating the mantis collection there
Speaker 5: because it hadn't really been updated in thirty years forty
Speaker 5: years or so, and so there's a lot of cool stuff.
Speaker 4: Did you know there was a Beauheart Museum of Entomology
Speaker 4: in Davis, California? Neither die because nobody told me. But
Speaker 4: also it's not far from your grandpod's final resting place,
Speaker 4: and perhaps a field trip is in order. So all
Speaker 4: those in favor say, it's really just up to me. Okay,
Speaker 4: So the place though, seems delightful and dumb's my kind
Speaker 4: of nerds and that was.
Speaker 5: Just fantastic and like that. Up to that point, I
Speaker 5: was like, I like it. I like it, but I
Speaker 5: hadn't done it. And then after working on that paper
Speaker 5: and going through the whole process, I was like, yeah,
Speaker 5: I could see myself doing this for a long time.
Speaker 1: So yeah, and now mantis mantis is where where are
Speaker 1: they endemic to and are they Do they tend to
Speaker 1: be from one region or are they everywhere?
Speaker 5: Yeah? So there are native mantis has found pretty much
Speaker 5: all over the world except Antarctica, so every major continent.
Speaker 5: So of course, like most insects, they are most diverse
Speaker 5: in the tropics, so you'll see most of the variation
Speaker 5: in morphology and species diversity there. But you know, we
Speaker 5: do have a lot of species in the US, for
Speaker 5: example alone. I know a lot of people think that
Speaker 5: we tend to have just one or two, the Chinese
Speaker 5: mantis and the Carolina mantis, but we have twenty seven
Speaker 5: native species in the US, so a lot more, a
Speaker 5: lot more than people think. Yeah, and that's just what's
Speaker 5: been described. So this year actually I described a new
Speaker 5: manta species from Arizona and it's it's pretty big. It's
Speaker 5: a big species in the genus Stagua Mantis. So just
Speaker 5: to point out that, like mantis, haven't had a lot
Speaker 5: of work done, So there's potential for new species still
Speaker 5: to be discovered if people go and collect and you know,
Speaker 5: check their collections against what's been recorded. It's very exciting.
Speaker 1: That is really exciting.
Speaker 4: For more on this, you can see Lohit's twenty twenty
Speaker 4: three paper, Observational Reports of oviposition differences in geographically disparate
Speaker 4: populations of Stagmomantis Lambara the non Consumptive Effects of Invasive Competitors,
Speaker 4: which includes photos of the European mantis and the bordered
Speaker 4: mantis with their egg cases on everything from oak leaves
Speaker 4: to dry grasses to fence posts.
Speaker 1: Not put them anywhere in general habitat wise, are they
Speaker 1: looking for really leafy areas where they can hide behind
Speaker 1: things or do they do okay like arid but burrow
Speaker 1: dwelling or something.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, that's a great question. So it depends on
Speaker 5: the species, which is like a very hand wavy biology answer.
Speaker 5: It depends, right, We always hear it all the time,
Speaker 5: but it really does. Each species tends to have different
Speaker 5: types of microhabitats that they tend to like. So some
Speaker 5: species really like grassy fields, some species like more open
Speaker 5: chaparral habitat like the ground mantises and the genus little nutrio.
Speaker 5: If you're ever in the southwest US, you'll see tons
Speaker 5: of those late summer. They're so abundant it's crazy. And
Speaker 5: then you have species that look more like sticks and
Speaker 5: they really like more hanging out in the branches opposed
Speaker 5: to closer to the ground. So yeah, it just varies.
Speaker 4: So while the largest praying mantisses my top out around
Speaker 4: five inches or thirteen centimeters, how teeny we talking? How
Speaker 4: small do they get like mantises in general? As a
Speaker 4: as full ground because I know we see nymphs coming
Speaker 4: out of thea.
Speaker 1: How did you pronounce it?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, get to know, that's one of those words you
Speaker 1: see written much more than you say.
Speaker 5: Strange word.
Speaker 1: Means an egg container and in Greek and is an
Speaker 1: ovary and not a capsule full of tiny roaches or mantids.
Speaker 1: When they pop out of that thing like a clown car.
Speaker 1: There's so many of them in there, they just scatter,
Speaker 1: they start eating each other. It's a buffet as well
Speaker 1: as a family reunion at the same time, all in one,
Speaker 1: and so like that's really where survival, that's just where
Speaker 1: natural selection comes in. I guess right, if you can
Speaker 1: outrun your hungry siblings, then your genes move on.
Speaker 5: There's definitely cannibalism is like, of course, the thing that
Speaker 5: mantis are super well known for. Everyone knows that mansis
Speaker 5: do the thing. Definitely a lot of the nymphs do
Speaker 5: will end up eating each other at some point, usually
Speaker 5: within the first twenty four hours, and across many many species,
Speaker 5: it sort of tends to be true. The first day
Speaker 5: is really when the nymps are focused on running away,
Speaker 5: so they just want to find their own territory, get
Speaker 5: away from everyone, minimize potentially competition with their siblings, and
Speaker 5: then after that it's kind of a free for all
Speaker 5: for most of the species, especially the ones in the
Speaker 5: temperate areas, just because the competition is so stiff because
Speaker 5: winter is always coming in a couple of months. So
Speaker 5: in like places, like the US, the nyms kind of
Speaker 5: just have to be like make a decision. Okay, well,
Speaker 5: my siblings here and I'm not getting a lot of food,
Speaker 5: so you know, I gotta I'll take the meal that
Speaker 5: I can get.
Speaker 1: Times dinner is in a live family member and it's
Speaker 1: regional cuisine, so you say, when in Rome and very hungry.
Speaker 5: But it's sort of interesting because in the tropics you
Speaker 5: see a lot of the opposite, So there's sort of
Speaker 5: some differences. Instead of hatching all at once, like a
Speaker 5: lot of the egg cases tend to do here, you'll
Speaker 5: have egg cases that hatch a couple individuals per day,
Speaker 5: or a couple individuals every couple of weeks or something,
Speaker 5: just to sort of give the individuals time to disperse.
Speaker 5: Or you'll have siblings that are more tolerant of each
Speaker 5: other and they tend not to cannibalize. So there's some variation.
Speaker 5: It's pretty interesting. It hasn't really been well studied though,
Speaker 5: because I think everyone is under the assumption that you know,
Speaker 5: mantiss do the cannibalizing, that's like what they do.
Speaker 1: So what about when you're keeping them, do you have
Speaker 1: to be really on top of it in terms of
Speaker 1: when they hatch out, and if you are putting them
Speaker 1: into their own sort of territory.
Speaker 5: M h yeah, usually i'll once they hatch, because they
Speaker 5: when they hatch and wriggle out and it's really cool
Speaker 5: if you've never seen it happen in person. But they
Speaker 5: basically each nim full spin a little line of silk
Speaker 5: and emerge out of the egg case and dangle down
Speaker 5: and then that's when they undergo their first molt. So
Speaker 5: they'll do it mid air, while hanging down from the
Speaker 5: string of silk. They'll molt and then they look like
Speaker 5: an actual amantis that we know, rather than an alien worm.
Speaker 5: I can send you a video of this so if
Speaker 5: you want to see you later.
Speaker 4: So the mantises kind of squirm out of these few
Speaker 4: slits in this hardened ooh fika, and then they dangle
Speaker 4: off these silk threads in a baby gang, and it
Speaker 4: looks a huge bunch of helium balloons, but upside down,
Speaker 4: and instead of balloons, they're eighty bitty light colored mandises
Speaker 4: whose skin shells still need to harden. And then they
Speaker 4: hop off their silk threads and onto a surrounding surface
Speaker 4: to go well, holy smokes, shell was crowded. Also, I'm
Speaker 4: starving for bug guts.
Speaker 1: What do we got?
Speaker 5: It's very cool. And then so they'll once they do
Speaker 5: their well, now they look like a mantis, but they
Speaker 5: need to slerotize, so that's when they harden their exoskeleton, right,
Speaker 5: getting ready to be able to hunt and jump and
Speaker 5: run away. And so usually what will happen is they'll
Speaker 5: kind of just sit somewhere for a couple hours while
Speaker 5: they're hardening, and then that's when they start running around
Speaker 5: like crazy. So it becomes really hard to move all
Speaker 5: these little babies into their own cups. And so usually
Speaker 5: what I tend to do is I just keep them
Speaker 5: in like a sort of big enclosure that they have
Speaker 5: a lot of space and a lot of purchase, so that
Speaker 5: they can still separate out but not stress each other
Speaker 5: out too much, and then just keep giving them food
Speaker 5: in an effort to minimize cannibalism. But still happens. Unfortunately,
Speaker 5: it's inevitable.
Speaker 1: It's just instinct. I mean, it's how they've survived this long.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what about other natural adaptations? Because they're so diverse,
Speaker 1: at least from a morphology perspective, can you tell me
Speaker 1: about some of the some of the weirder looking ones.
Speaker 5: Definitely, yeah, I mean one of my favorites is definitely
Speaker 5: the genus Toxidera. It's problem most people probably haven't heard
Speaker 5: of them, but they're the Asian dragon mantis's is their
Speaker 5: common name. So they're giant, they're like six seven inches long,
Speaker 5: super elongate. They have these like really beautiful protrusions on them.
Speaker 1: Okay, I wasn't going to interrupt to describe them, but
Speaker 1: then I looked them up.
Speaker 4: People people, these things. They're native to Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela,
Speaker 4: and they're this modeled brownish green color and they have
Speaker 4: giant alien eyes that are much taller than they are wide.
Speaker 4: So these big vertical eyes, each of which is topped
Speaker 4: with like a cake server spatula shaped horn, and then
Speaker 4: one bigger cake spatula horn in the middle of their head,
Speaker 4: and then these two long, pointy antennas, and they just
Speaker 4: look so gorgeously evil, like an extraterrestrial that you want
Speaker 4: to kill us all it deserves too stunning, and.
Speaker 5: They're butterfly specialists. So basically what they do is they'll
Speaker 5: sit under a leaf and they have these really long
Speaker 5: legs that are sort of space closely together, so they
Speaker 5: can just dangle and they almost get a full three
Speaker 5: sixty degree motion just by being able to rotate their legs.
Speaker 5: And they'll sit with their four legs held open when
Speaker 5: they see a butterfly fly by, and if the butterfly
Speaker 5: gets close enough, then the bear trap closes and they
Speaker 5: snatch it out of the air. It's very very very cool.
Speaker 5: Mantis genus talk sadera very weird, very strange. They don't
Speaker 5: even look like a normal mantis. They're very cool insects.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do they eat the wings too? Or are they
Speaker 1: like nah?
Speaker 5: Those Actually I think they do eat some of the wings,
Speaker 5: but I think they will also if there. It's a
Speaker 5: weird thing. It's the analogy I like to use is
Speaker 5: like if you watch a grizzly bear hunting during a
Speaker 5: salmon run, when they go for the salmon eggs, because
Speaker 5: that's what mantis is like to do. So when you
Speaker 5: see the mantis is posted up in your garden, they're
Speaker 5: going to eat all the good stuff because they know
Speaker 5: more food's gonna come. It says, you told you can.
Speaker 1: We did have some milkweed in our garden and we
Speaker 1: had a couple of monarchs in stars on their disappeared
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I don't know who's eetnam? That's all right?
Speaker 4: Circle, Can pantases eat monarchs? Aren't they toxic because of
Speaker 4: their host plant milkweed?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 1: I couldn't resist looking it up. And yes.
Speaker 4: There is a twenty seventeen article titled impact of consuming
Speaker 4: toxic monarch caterpillars on adult Chinese manted mask gain and fecundity,
Speaker 4: which explained that number one mantids discard the gut tissue
Speaker 4: from monarch larvae while consuming the rest of the caterpillar.
Speaker 4: They just toss those guts right out, even though the
Speaker 4: caterpillar's body still has those cardenolides, which are these plant
Speaker 4: steroids that make a lot of birds barf when they
Speaker 4: eat monarchs. Now, this study actually found, this is wild,
Speaker 4: that when mantids ate monarchs and their larvae, they gained
Speaker 4: more weight and they produced heavier eggs. So the verdict
Speaker 4: as a mantis goes hard and eats toxic things and thrives,
Speaker 4: and it does it in your face.
Speaker 1: What about ones that look like sticks or orchids or yeah,
Speaker 1: what are some other mimics or morphs that they've got.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's like and mimics. Like you mentioned, there's stick
Speaker 5: mimicking species that we actually have two in the US,
Speaker 5: so if you ever go to Arizona or Texas, you
Speaker 5: can look for the unicorn mantises that are there. Each
Speaker 5: state has their own respective species, so they look just
Speaker 5: like a stick. They are modeled and have wavy legs
Speaker 5: and they look just like they'll blend in perfectly. It's
Speaker 5: really cool. There's species that have grasshopper like kind legs,
Speaker 5: so we call them the grasshopper mantises, and they also
Speaker 5: can jump quite well like a grasshopper. Also very cool,
Speaker 5: small little guys. There's species that mimic bark, so they
Speaker 5: will hunt on tree faces. So if you ever in Florida,
Speaker 5: we have a native species there that you can find.
Speaker 5: We have grass mimicking species that are more slender and
Speaker 5: very narrow, so just to hide within the grass. There's
Speaker 5: species that mimic flowers, of course, like our orchidvantis that
Speaker 5: everyone loves. But there's also a species in Africa and
Speaker 5: South America that also convergently evolved some similar morphology, so
Speaker 5: also doing the same mimicry. And of course dead leaf
Speaker 5: mimics tons and tons of dead leaf mimics and mantises,
Speaker 5: because if you're a dead leaf, then you don't have
Speaker 5: to move at all, because you are the ultimate sitting
Speaker 5: point twitter.
Speaker 4: So imagine those crispy brown leaves that you crunch through
Speaker 4: and fall, but up close, one of them has legs
Speaker 4: in a mouth and a brain and an agenda. That's
Speaker 4: a dead leaf mantis.
Speaker 5: Some species mimic the type of dead leaf that kind
Speaker 5: of hangs off a branch and falling off. There's species
Speaker 5: that mimic more generally the forest floor litter. There's species
Speaker 5: that try to mimic like a gnarled, twisted leaf that's
Speaker 5: on a branch, so lots of different variations. Really cool,
Speaker 5: they're so gorgeous.
Speaker 1: It's so nuts when you see them and then they
Speaker 1: start walking. I wonder if it has ever really given
Speaker 1: like existential crises to animals out there where they're like
Speaker 1: that leaf just started walking. I don't know what's real.
Speaker 5: What just happened. I saw that leaf was over there.
Speaker 1: And then what about research that mantis entomologists meant ment ideology, mentodiologists,
Speaker 1: liken todiologists are doing, Like are there particular issues with
Speaker 1: like invasive species, per dating on local species, or are
Speaker 1: there like this one's dying out. What are manned experts
Speaker 1: worried about right now?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's a great question. Unfortunately, there's not a lot
Speaker 5: of mantis researchers in general, so and I think this
Speaker 5: is sort of a double edged story because it's very
Speaker 5: exciting in the sense that any new discovery about life
Speaker 5: history or ecology tends to be new because not many
Speaker 5: people have researched it, But that also means there's less
Speaker 5: to go off of. And you sort of see this
Speaker 5: in how people like the USTA, for example, has policy
Speaker 5: around praying mantises, so you know, Chinese mantises are totally
Speaker 5: for example, okay to sell a garden stores pretty much anywhere,
Speaker 5: regardless of whether it's the East Coast or the West coast.
Speaker 5: So if you find them in California or anywhere else,
Speaker 5: it's because they were subsequently just brought outside from a
Speaker 5: garden store and sold there.
Speaker 4: So yeah, you can buy uthiki for pest control like
Speaker 4: garden A, fod Control, and even Amazon it will sell
Speaker 4: you a full egg case for fifteen bucks, which is
Speaker 4: like eight cents per mantis. But mantodiologists are like, try
Speaker 4: to find your native ones so that invasive critters don't
Speaker 4: compete for food with locals. Okay, And in the US,
Speaker 4: the Chinese mantis again big ones up to four inches
Speaker 4: or a European mantis can be so much larger than
Speaker 4: native species. Also, it's not my fault that that sent
Speaker 4: me down a whole learning about how the Chinese mantis
Speaker 4: was first observed in North America in eighteen ninety seven,
Speaker 4: the first one was found on a tomato vine of
Speaker 4: one mister Joseph Hindemeyer in the small suburb of Mount
Speaker 4: Airy outside of Philadelphia. And to this day it's thought
Speaker 4: that this globally lauded local botanist and landscape garden architect
Speaker 4: his name was Thomas Meehan, imported some plants and now
Speaker 4: we've got these big butted beauties everywhere, including my yard.
Speaker 1: I love them, but but.
Speaker 5: They do push out native Carolina mantiss I mean I've
Speaker 5: seen it in just on campus in certain patches, because
Speaker 5: they tend to be bigger and they grow faster, and
Speaker 5: so Carolina mantises end up having a tough time competing
Speaker 5: with them. And I'm sure, as you saw with your
Speaker 5: monarchs stuff, they can get eaten. And when you have
Speaker 5: an invasive mantis that's two and a half times bigger
Speaker 5: than a native species and they exist in high abundance,
Speaker 5: they're vacuuming up a lot of biomass. How much that is,
Speaker 5: I mean, no one has really done a proper study
Speaker 5: to say, but there has been papers that have shown
Speaker 5: that they push out wolf spiders, for example, in their
Speaker 5: area just because they smell the mantis peegal matter, and
Speaker 5: then they want to leave the area because they know
Speaker 5: they're going to get eaten. I guess, oh wow, some
Speaker 5: sort of aversive learning there.
Speaker 4: If you smell the poo of an assassin, get the
Speaker 4: fuck out of there pronto. Also, mantis shit is called frass,
Speaker 4: way better sounding name than shit. I wish ours was
Speaker 4: called frass. And there's no reason why we can't start immediately.
Speaker 4: But if you need some of this frass by mantids
Speaker 4: in your life, but you don't want to chase the
Speaker 4: mantids around with a tiny diaper, you can purchase two
Speaker 4: liters of a soil enhancing product called frass Farms pro Mantis,
Speaker 4: which is just a sealed bucket of manted poop and
Speaker 4: other goodies that provide quote enormous biodiversity, bacteria and fungi species.
Speaker 4: That's one way to get rid of wolf spiders, but
Speaker 4: I really would not recommend it. But yes, people and
Speaker 4: not just wolf spiders, are still figuring out what is
Speaker 4: happening with invasive mantids.
Speaker 5: So we do have some evidence that you know, at
Speaker 5: least the non native species do eat things or do
Speaker 5: have impacts that species don't. We just haven't done enough
Speaker 5: to sort of look at that yet.
Speaker 1: Can I ask you some questions from listeners who had
Speaker 1: one million questions? Yeah, of course, okay, but before we
Speaker 1: ask your questions, patrons will take a quick break for
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Speaker 4: Okay, Patron questions. If you want your question asked and
Speaker 4: names said with my mouth, you can join patrons at
Speaker 4: patreon dot com slash ologies so I can look at
Speaker 4: them and maybe pick them. And all right, let's get
Speaker 4: our spiky death forearms on some of these queries, shall we.
Speaker 1: Let's see Erica Florey wants to know what is a
Speaker 1: collective name for a group of mantids.
Speaker 5: Oh, I don't think that's been made yet. You can
Speaker 5: call it a monacherie. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Fantasy's done, a mobilization of fantasy. Both excellent. I think
Speaker 1: that you get to decide. I think you just did.
Speaker 4: Mouse Paxton parent to mantis, Henrietta the Destroyer and Palli talks,
Speaker 4: and Princess Dawson Leone the Mama to mantids Nan and
Speaker 4: Mackenzie King wants to know why do they look so
Speaker 4: wise like they definitely have secrets to the universe in
Speaker 4: that triangle head and Emily McLeod said, OMG, I had
Speaker 4: the same question. They do that head tilt that makes
Speaker 4: it look like they're thinking really hard? Are they the
Speaker 4: Scholar of bugs?
Speaker 1: The Joyful Spitfire also wants to know are they pentive
Speaker 1: and enlightened? Are they pretty smart? Good hunters?
Speaker 5: I like to think so. I think I would say
Speaker 5: they're a lot like cats, because they will they do
Speaker 5: likely as pointers. That's sort of on a side, but
Speaker 5: they go about hunting the same way a cat would,
Speaker 5: so you know, they see something, they sort of really
Speaker 5: tuck down, get in, get into the stocking. And then
Speaker 5: if the thing that they're hunting freaks them out, then
Speaker 5: they freak out and they have no interest in hunting anymore,
Speaker 5: just like a cat. I'm out of here. So they're
Speaker 5: very feline if you actually sit and watch them. So
Speaker 5: all the cat lovers should love mantises because they're basically
Speaker 5: small cats that you can find anywhere.
Speaker 4: Correct, if you love cats, you will maybe like mantises,
Speaker 4: maybe love them.
Speaker 5: And I say this as a cat person. I have
Speaker 5: two cats, but yeah, mantises I think are fairly smart.
Speaker 5: They do really pay attention to what's going on around them,
Speaker 5: and that's part of what makes it so frustrating to
Speaker 5: find them sometimes is because unlike a lot of other insects,
Speaker 5: mantises will try to change the way that they're hiding.
Speaker 5: So they may be waiting for prey and then they
Speaker 5: see you coming by and they realize, oh, shoot, that's
Speaker 5: the thing that might want to eat me, and then
Speaker 5: they'll change their passi to be more like a stick,
Speaker 5: or if they're on the bark, they'll try to run
Speaker 5: around to the other side of the tree, and so
Speaker 5: it can be quite the challenge trying to find the
Speaker 5: mantis because you got to put yourself in their mind
Speaker 5: a little bit, think about how they're thinking about you.
Speaker 1: Have you all studied like how big their ganglia is
Speaker 1: or if they can remember things like Have there been
Speaker 1: any neurological testing of mantids.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there has been a little bit, not for mantiss specifically,
Speaker 5: but I think when people have looked into insect brain
Speaker 5: structures and head structures, they do include mantises, and for mantises,
Speaker 5: they tend to include very commonly used species and studies
Speaker 5: like Chinese mantises or Carolina mantises. Am I understanding is
Speaker 5: that I don't think it's especially large or different than
Speaker 5: most other insects. I think they're just such a visual
Speaker 5: animal that they're very attentive for that reason, and so
Speaker 5: they can make decisions and move about their environment a
Speaker 5: way that's very different than a lot of other insects might.
Speaker 4: But you might not even know they're there because they
Speaker 4: look bonkers. Asked quite bluntly, why do they look like that?
Speaker 4: Sean Hebrink wanted to know. Is aggressive mimicry the best
Speaker 4: phrase in science? And are orchidmantis is the coolest animal ever?
Speaker 1: Let's learn.
Speaker 4: Other folks asked about camouflage, like Sarah Rosso, Anna Stevens,
Speaker 4: Aaron Anderson, Jen Squirrel, Alvarez, Lived, Timbrini, Kathleen Regovic, Miranda Panda,
Speaker 4: Chandler Witherington, and Evan Davis, who asked what causes some
Speaker 4: to be pink aesthetic queen? They say, and Ada wanted
Speaker 4: to know why do so many mimic flowers or other insects?
Speaker 4: And that's just good camouflage that they can hunt better.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, for orcidmantises though, it's aggressive mimicry, so they
Speaker 5: don't actually even need to be in flowers or even
Speaker 5: near flowers at all. They reflect UV light actually better
Speaker 5: than flowers in some cases, and so pray will just
Speaker 5: fly right to them they are the flower, and then
Speaker 5: pray just gets confused and they get eaten. So in
Speaker 5: some species it's mostly for camouflage, totally crack. In some
Speaker 5: species they take it to the next level and they
Speaker 5: use it against their prey.
Speaker 1: That's so tricky, that's so and I wonder if they
Speaker 1: realize that they look so much like a flower, or
Speaker 1: if they're just like hunting's actually really easy for me
Speaker 1: for some reason, Like do they realize.
Speaker 5: Stuff just comes my way? Yeah, everything just works.
Speaker 1: Out, Everything happens for a reason. Weren't looking like a
Speaker 1: But what about Anie McAdams wants to know. Do we
Speaker 1: know at what point in history they started being referred
Speaker 1: to as praying mantids? And also with this much talk
Speaker 1: of prey. Every time I go to spell praying mantis,
Speaker 1: I want to spell it with an E, like they
Speaker 1: prey on things. Patrons Sarah King, Mish the Fish Hope,
Speaker 1: Madeline all asked essentially what religion are mantids? Who are
Speaker 1: they praying to? And others had questions about their mythical
Speaker 1: reputations like Amelia diaz Edinger, dirt Witch Nin the Joyful Spitfire,
Speaker 1: and essentially Anie McAdams and Sarah King asked for all
Speaker 1: of us, what's what the name?
Speaker 5: So the I agree it disconfusing and when I started
Speaker 5: I totally did that all the time, so I understand.
Speaker 5: But the praying mantis term actually comes from the first
Speaker 5: species that was described by Linnaeus, Mantis religios, so it's
Speaker 5: still a valid species, that's the European mantis. So if
Speaker 5: you're in any of the northern States, it's probably the
Speaker 5: most common mantis you'll see. It's everywhere now. But mantis
Speaker 5: religios so translated from Matin, literally means praying mantis, so
Speaker 5: praying mantis representing the whole order.
Speaker 4: And what's in a name a lot of behavior that
Speaker 4: made people go hey, that reminds me of stuff. And
Speaker 4: according to the nineteen ninety nine textbook The Predatory Behavior
Speaker 4: of Mantids, Historical Attitudes and Contemporary Questions, centuries ago in Egypt,
Speaker 4: a mantis appears as a deity called the bird fly
Speaker 4: in the Book of the Dead, and it leads souls
Speaker 4: to the underworld. Thanks birdfly, you're welcome. And the Greeks
Speaker 4: also gave mantuses the reputation of a diviner, and they
Speaker 4: thought they could point the way home because they didn't
Speaker 4: have GPS or even map quest so it was like, fuck,
Speaker 4: if I know, let's ask this bug. At one point
Speaker 4: Greeks were even horny for them, and over two hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty years before the Common Era, that pastoral poet
Speaker 4: Theocritus uses them as a visual reference to being locked
Speaker 4: in an embrace. Writing this two thousand plus year old
Speaker 4: sext lord, thy sin hath found thee out. Thou's wished
Speaker 4: and wished, and now faith thoust I there'll be a
Speaker 4: mantis to clasp thee all night long. But in this
Speaker 4: ancient soft core porn, he doesn't mention anything about getting
Speaker 4: eaten face first, but we're gonna cover that in a bit.
Speaker 4: But yeah, their arms look like they're praying on things,
Speaker 4: but really they're just praying on things. Now, is there
Speaker 4: any evidence that maybe maybe they're praying? Mantis name is
Speaker 4: kind of a clever turn of phrase having to do
Speaker 4: with some organized religions having predatory behavior. Mm no, makes
Speaker 4: you think, doesn't it. So Patrons Cake Goldenberg, Joe A
Speaker 4: and mythology guests John Bouche you can see his excellent
Speaker 4: episode linked in the show notes. Oh he's amazing, and
Speaker 4: patron Emilia all kind of wanted to know if there
Speaker 4: was mythological.
Speaker 1: Trivia on their age old reputation. So that's it. Speaking
Speaker 1: of age old, JMI, Alexander wants to know how long
Speaker 1: do you mantids live?
Speaker 5: Great question? I hate saying this. It varies so some
Speaker 5: most species generally, So that's just a rule of thought.
Speaker 5: Most species are going to be anywhere from the six
Speaker 5: to twelve month range. Usually males are more like the
Speaker 5: six to eight to ten month range, and females up
Speaker 5: to that twelve months. And the tropics is a little
Speaker 5: bit different. It's just because it's warm year round. You'll
Speaker 5: end up with species that can live almost two three
Speaker 5: years in some cases in the females, So super long
Speaker 5: lived species in some cases.
Speaker 1: Yeah, do they go somewhere for winter or are they
Speaker 1: just okay with colder temperatures.
Speaker 5: In places like most of the US where it does
Speaker 5: have like a normal winter, mantis is usually over winter
Speaker 5: in their egg cases, So the females will lay before
Speaker 5: winter and the eggs will just tolerate the cold, and
Speaker 5: then they hatch in spring once the conditions are favorable.
Speaker 5: Except for those unicorn mantises that I was mentioning. They're
Speaker 5: weird because they will actually sit out in the winter
Speaker 5: as nymphs, and so they get snowed on, they get
Speaker 5: under the ice in Arizona, and then when it thaws
Speaker 5: they'll shake it off and go hunting. So how we
Speaker 5: do that we still don't know yet. They must have
Speaker 5: some kind of anti freeze or something. But it's really incredible.
Speaker 1: Oh man, the next generation of manted researchers. Maybe we'll
Speaker 1: get to that.
Speaker 5: Oh I hope.
Speaker 4: So there you go, Susan c Leicster, Susan Lynn Ellie's
Speaker 4: weebel and mouse Paxton. That's how they survive the cold
Speaker 4: and buy that's how I mean, we don't know, and
Speaker 4: please become mentodiologists to figure out how they evolve that ability.
Speaker 4: I would like that instead of wearing coats. But here
Speaker 4: we are speaking of evolution. Colin robot And asked why
Speaker 4: the mantis shrimp shares a name. That's because the bug
Speaker 4: came first, and the shrimp is named in honor of
Speaker 4: the insect. Also, in ancient times, mantis shrimps weren't even
Speaker 4: called mantis shrimps. They were called sea locusts. So they're
Speaker 4: copping bugs left and right now. Speaking of posers, the
Speaker 4: lace wing manted flies and the wasp mantis flies, they
Speaker 4: both make you take double takes if you've ever seen one,
Speaker 4: because they have wasp butts or they have lace wing bodies,
Speaker 4: but they have those raptorial forelombs. It's as if there
Speaker 4: were regular bugs wearing praying mantess Halloween costumes that they
Speaker 4: made out of oven mits and cardboard and spray painted
Speaker 4: in the driveway. But they're not even related. Just convergent
Speaker 4: evolution because quick hinged and spiked arms they get the
Speaker 4: job done. But you just need millions of years of
Speaker 4: mutations to figure that out. But that's how that works.
Speaker 4: Patron Faith Novella and Meghan Matthew's adair. Now, Meghan asked,
Speaker 4: why are lace wings such bastards that I have bites
Speaker 4: that hurt so much. I have bad news and I
Speaker 4: have bad news, So you're committing sl because mantis lace
Speaker 4: wings don't have mouth muscles enough to bite you. And
Speaker 4: the other bad news is that you might have snake
Speaker 4: flies biting you. Both of those are good news for
Speaker 4: lace wing manted flies because they are hereby acquided of
Speaker 4: your accusations. They can go back to eating tree sap
Speaker 4: and other manted flies, which isn't cool. But that's just
Speaker 4: not my jurisdiction. Also not my forte kung fu, which
Speaker 4: was the topic of questions from Kate Goldenberg and Noah Pistana.
Speaker 4: But according to this one martial arts web page, I
Speaker 4: found myself deep on the northern praying mantis style kung
Speaker 4: fu is an art famous for its stripe captures and speed,
Speaker 4: and also highly toughened hands and fingers, and the site
Speaker 4: continues that imperial praying mantis kung fu is designed to
Speaker 4: fight multiple opponents with lethal intent and it comes from
Speaker 4: a direct lineage of true combat level kung fu. Now
Speaker 4: where what were we talking about?
Speaker 6: Oh?
Speaker 4: Yes, direct lineages? Okay, listen, Mercier Amber can hire. First
Speaker 4: time question asker Maria wamand Justin Bowen and Hannah Gory
Speaker 4: and Cyndia b wants to know what have they evolved
Speaker 4: from and what's their current closest relative.
Speaker 5: Mm. Not everyone's favorite group, but it's our humble cockroaches.
Speaker 1: Thoughts, because their heads they're same mm hmm.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So if you want to think about it like this,
Speaker 5: mantises are really elongate feline predatory roaches, because that is
Speaker 5: what they.
Speaker 1: Are, elongate feline roaches.
Speaker 5: I might turn some people off, but I think it's
Speaker 5: a very cool story that two insects that have a
Speaker 5: common ancestor can end up being very very different over time.
Speaker 1: That does make so much sense because if I look
Speaker 1: at a roach and I try to think of its
Speaker 1: head as mantis like. It freaks me out less like
Speaker 1: I love all insects, but roaches like in a home
Speaker 1: or inside, like, but their heads look so like you
Speaker 1: should see that face and go oh, I righty from
Speaker 1: the garden. It's all good. And I've heard that roaches
Speaker 1: are also kind of fastidious cleaners. Is that true?
Speaker 5: Yes, roaches actually do spend a lot of their time cleaning.
Speaker 5: I think they just get a bad rap because we
Speaker 5: do have some pest roach species and understandably so, pest
Speaker 5: roaches are also not a fan of Yes, but you know,
Speaker 5: most roaches do what most animals do in the wild
Speaker 5: is just just go about their business. They try to
Speaker 5: take care of themselves. And roaches like Mantus's do clean.
Speaker 5: Tend to clean a lot just to stay clean and
Speaker 5: for their own health. So maybe that was just something
Speaker 5: that evolved before they split apart and just stayed retained cleanliness.
Speaker 4: So cockroaches are cleaner than your sink that attracted them,
Speaker 4: and they're probably talking shit about you on their podcasts.
Speaker 4: Speaking of reputations, Petronine asked why are they such feminine icons, and,
Speaker 4: according to the twenty twenty paper Praying to the Predator
Speaker 4: symbols of insect animism on Luna elmenco polychrome from the
Speaker 4: pre Columbian Pacific Nicaragua oral traditions called praying mantis's the
Speaker 4: mother snake, and they were a symbol of matriarchy, which
Speaker 4: brings us to do praying mantis moms get floral arrangements
Speaker 4: from their thousands of babies a few times a year.
Speaker 4: Bjorn Fredberg asked, what do the mommy DIDs do after
Speaker 4: the eggs hatch or do they lay eggs in a
Speaker 4: fire and forget fashion? Are the newborn baby DIDs in
Speaker 4: danger of being eaten?
Speaker 5: So maternal care is something that is not studied will
Speaker 5: mantis is at all. We do know that many species
Speaker 5: engage in it. It's not the majority, certainly, but a
Speaker 5: fair number due and it seems to evolve multiple times
Speaker 5: across multiple groups, which is a great opportunity to study
Speaker 5: how maternal care evolves because usually it tends to be
Speaker 5: an all or nothing sort of situation in most groups,
Speaker 5: where most of the members do it and you know
Speaker 5: some don't or none do at all, but not the
Speaker 5: case with mantises. And usually what that looks like is
Speaker 5: the mother is sitting on top of the eggs, protecting
Speaker 5: it with their body parasites or predators from attacking it.
Speaker 5: And once the eggs hatch, she'll even hang around for
Speaker 5: a couple of days until the babies all disperse on
Speaker 5: their own, and then she'll let them go on their
Speaker 5: way and find a new spot to lay her next
Speaker 5: out of eggs.
Speaker 1: Oh so sweet though she just hangs out for a bit.
Speaker 5: Yeah, pretty good parenting. I mean that I've had species
Speaker 5: that they are so unwilling to be parted from the
Speaker 5: eggs that they'll you know, threat display and try to
Speaker 5: strike back up my hand when I go to try
Speaker 5: to try to remove the eggs for incubation. And I
Speaker 5: got to the point where I was like, well, this
Speaker 5: is a cool piece of natural history. So I just
Speaker 5: tend to leave the eggs with the mom now and
Speaker 5: let them just do their thing. It's been really cool.
Speaker 5: I've gotten to see some awesome instances of you know,
Speaker 5: the babies hanging out around mom and she's just like, ah, God,
Speaker 5: deal with all these kids, beautiful thynk her motherhood. She
Speaker 5: doesn't eat them though, right, No, Yeah, she's totally tolerant
Speaker 5: to them, even in some cases, even if she move
Speaker 5: move off while she's going to hunt. She'll come back
Speaker 5: to the eggs after going off to hunt, so there's
Speaker 5: some spatial awareness there, or she's smelling the eggs and
Speaker 5: you know, knowing what they are, which is really cool. Yeah,
Speaker 5: they're quite good parents, the species that do engagement maternal career.
Speaker 5: I mean, they really protect their babies with their whole
Speaker 5: body if they can.
Speaker 1: And then I guess that brings us though to sexual cannibalism,
Speaker 1: as Derek asked about, is it increased in captivity? Can
Speaker 1: you tell us a little bit about the romance of mantis.
Speaker 5: Oh man, Yeah, there's a lot to talk about that.
Speaker 5: Some species love displaying for the females. The males have
Speaker 5: these super eloquent displays, you know, a lot like our
Speaker 5: peacock jumping spiders that everyone loves. They'll flash their wings,
Speaker 5: they'll wave their forelegs around. They often have bright colors
Speaker 5: to show off to the female, and a lot of
Speaker 5: that's just to sort of say, hey, you know, I'm
Speaker 5: interested in mating, I'm not here to like compete with
Speaker 5: you or anything like that. And then usually once the female,
Speaker 5: if she actually likes the display, you know, she'll she'll
Speaker 5: turn around and then he'll do.
Speaker 4: His thing by that low heat means they will bone. Also,
Speaker 4: Derek wasn't the only little freak who asked about this,
Speaker 4: so did patrons Margot Lewis, Nicole Kleiman, Ashley Rocket, Laura
Speaker 4: Grigorous of tomsk Devour of Pop Tart's Ficture of Many Battles,
Speaker 4: Kathleen Regovich o Work, Derek Allen so we lit In,
Speaker 4: Danielle Fidelia, and Lisa Werman also wanted to know about
Speaker 4: sexual cannibalism in Manton's.
Speaker 5: At least in captivity. Sexual cannibalism does happen. Still, it's
Speaker 5: very rare in general. I would say it's maybe like
Speaker 5: one in ten one in fifteen mating events.
Speaker 1: If she likes it, they'll go ahead and go for it,
Speaker 1: But only like one in fifteen encounters is potentially like
Speaker 1: not second datetill.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. Usually the female is that she really doesn't
Speaker 5: like the male. She'll just kind of walk away unless
Speaker 5: he can kind of bother her. Then she'll kind of
Speaker 5: get fed up with him sometimes, So there's a lot
Speaker 5: of female choice in some cases where the female's like,
Speaker 5: I really don't want to mate right now, and you
Speaker 5: keep bothering me, she will just eat him because she's like,
Speaker 5: you're not leave me alone, fuckle me. I've definitely had
Speaker 5: that happen. I've also had males. Usually I try to
Speaker 5: feed the females while I'm doing these attempts, just to
Speaker 5: make sure they're full, and they're not interested just because
Speaker 5: they're hungry to eat them. And sometimes the male will
Speaker 5: be like, you know what, actually need a stack, and
Speaker 5: then he'll try to steal her food, which then causes
Speaker 5: her to get bad and then still try to eat
Speaker 5: them anyway because she's like, well, now you're taking my food,
Speaker 5: which I can't blame her in that situation, I mean,
Speaker 5: it's fair enough.
Speaker 1: Do they ever then sort of pretend to be receptive
Speaker 1: just out of because they're hungry?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, So this is something that I don't know
Speaker 5: if it's one hundred percent the reason, if it's just
Speaker 5: because the female wants to mate with more males. But
Speaker 5: I've had females that I've made it sometimes even a
Speaker 5: couple times, and they'll still be releasing pheromones, and it's
Speaker 5: usually when they are not completely full yet because they
Speaker 5: just need to make more eggs. So I think in
Speaker 5: that situation they're like well like if we end up mating, great,
Speaker 5: If not free meal like, it's either worry works so
Speaker 5: they can be quite sly when they need to be
Speaker 5: if they're really desperate for food.
Speaker 4: Oh that's rough out there, man, But our invasive mantisays
Speaker 4: making it rougher. Patrons Susie k Emily g Becky, the
Speaker 4: Seagrass Scientist, Robin Coohan, first time question asker, Valerie and
Speaker 4: Rebecca Girling, the Joyful Spitfire, Peyton Henderson, Sam Wise and
Speaker 4: Tiger Udy had a question about invasive species, with Robin
Speaker 4: wondering how worried to be, Becky asking how mad to be?
Speaker 4: And Alison Gussick straight up just wondering if mantisys are
Speaker 4: maybe interplanetary visitors, asking are we sure they aren't aliens?
Speaker 4: Natasha Garrison says for Christmas a few years ago, my
Speaker 4: brother received a kit that allowed you to send away
Speaker 4: for a manted egg for educational purposes.
Speaker 1: My questions are, is that okay? Is that doing anything
Speaker 1: crazy with the population? Is it helping or hurting? Or
Speaker 1: should I be buying a kit for my adult self
Speaker 1: right now?
Speaker 5: I would say most likely with those kids, you're probably
Speaker 5: going to be eating Chinese mantises, And in that situation,
Speaker 5: it probably doesn't matter anyway, because they're not native and
Speaker 5: they tend to be so abundant that even removing a
Speaker 5: couple dozen egg cases from some fields won't even make
Speaker 5: a dent. So I would say, go for it, live
Speaker 5: your best mantis keeping life.
Speaker 1: And do they have people that are kind of going
Speaker 1: out and harvesting those egg cases or those are captive?
Speaker 5: Usually for the Chinese mantises, they tend to just collect
Speaker 5: them outside because they just tend to be so frequent
Speaker 5: and abundant. Which it's sort of a question our lab
Speaker 5: has been having recently is what is the population genetics
Speaker 5: like for the Chinese mantises here? Just because where the
Speaker 5: egg cases probably got moved around from all over the place,
Speaker 5: and you know, they end up in places like California,
Speaker 5: not that they tend to persist there just because it's drier,
Speaker 5: but they end up moving all over the country. So
Speaker 5: where are the sources and sinks of these populations? Are
Speaker 5: they all being collected from one air area and then
Speaker 5: going everywhere else or intermingling? We don't know that anyway.
Speaker 5: Chinese mantis is totally fine.
Speaker 4: Let's say that you don't buy an egg case and
Speaker 4: you just want to bring all the mantises to the yard.
Speaker 4: What are we talking habitat wise? Ideally asked Hollybrinkle, Amber Pineda, Rube, pepita,
Speaker 4: bugs or rad Shannon Amioit, Colin Robottom and first time
Speaker 4: question asker and as tabula native Val Vanderlip. Also Carly
Speaker 4: wants to know first time question asker, how can I
Speaker 4: attract mantids to my yard?
Speaker 1: I live in Olympia, Washington. So do you just buy
Speaker 1: some and puts them out there? Or is there to attract?
Speaker 5: I would say if it's not a species that's native,
Speaker 5: I would recommend not just buying and releasing them totally
Speaker 5: to keep them mis bets if you want just on principle.
Speaker 4: But what if you want to send a message to
Speaker 4: wild mantiss that your general area is just a chill
Speaker 4: place to hang out of doors.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So mantus is really like garb gardens or green
Speaker 5: spaces that have a lot of foliage and insect succession.
Speaker 5: So because they start off so so small and they
Speaker 5: end up so much bigger, they need to have insect
Speaker 5: prey that can grow with them, and so they're a
Speaker 5: great sign of healthy, diverse habitat. So I would say
Speaker 5: if you plant plants that are native to your area
Speaker 5: and flowering plants that can attract nectar feeders, you'll eventually
Speaker 5: get vantises because they can only really sustain a population
Speaker 5: in an area when they have enough prey that's regularly
Speaker 5: growing up with them. But also the habitat itself is stable.
Speaker 1: Oh okay, and that just would benefit all kinds of
Speaker 1: pollinators as well.
Speaker 5: Yeah right, amazing, good for everyone.
Speaker 1: Good for everyone. And I know Zercees Society is great
Speaker 1: for telling people what to plant in like different zones.
Speaker 1: I think they might recommend different seed mixes too, which
Speaker 1: is pretty cool. It's true.
Speaker 4: And I'll link to Zercees dot Org on my website
Speaker 4: because you deserve some beautiful wildflowers and so do all
Speaker 4: the tiny strangers that you will be friends with. Now,
Speaker 4: speaking of beauty, can mandus's see you very well now?
Speaker 4: The bloated toad asked what's up with their freaky eyeballs,
Speaker 4: and other patrons with eye questions include Mouse Paxton, DTL
Speaker 4: One of One, Margot Lewis, Sean Verbridge, Ali Be, Jennifer Foe,
Speaker 4: Jason Lowenthal, Dory Miranda Panda, Charlie Eisman, Sarah Metzker and
Speaker 4: first time question asker's Dwayne Tullus Freud and Maria Andres,
Speaker 4: who wanted to know if those big pretty boys.
Speaker 1: Are just for show. Alyssa Melissa, first time question asker
Speaker 1: wants to know if you've seen the studies, more importantly,
Speaker 1: the pictures where they wore three D glasses. How crazy
Speaker 1: is their visual system? Those eyes hold secrets.
Speaker 5: Yeah, mantis's are amazing in terms of their vision. I mean,
Speaker 5: they're the only insect that we know for sure hystereoscopic.
Speaker 4: Vision, so do we That just means that two images
Speaker 4: at slightly different angles help perceive in three D, and
Speaker 4: swaying back and forth helps them.
Speaker 5: So they can get depth just by motion parallax. So
Speaker 5: when they're doing that side to side motion that you
Speaker 5: see them do sometimes sometimes it could be for just
Speaker 5: for camouflage, but usually when they're sitting still and doing it,
Speaker 5: it's for gauging depth and that really lets them, you know,
Speaker 5: be the amazing hunters they are because and some of
Speaker 5: the species are even able to use that to just
Speaker 5: catch stuff on the wings, so fly flying by snap
Speaker 5: it out of the air. I got it.
Speaker 1: I got it, so instead of having to stock an ambush,
Speaker 1: it's just like that kind of precision to catch it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but Zombat Nin and Jason Ganley wanted to know
Speaker 4: what is the small black dot on their eyes and
Speaker 4: I look this up. It's called a pseudo pupil, and
Speaker 4: it's not a structure so much, but it's a spot
Speaker 4: where the almetidia, those honeycomb looking compound eye structures, are
Speaker 4: absorbing the light more. And they can have up to
Speaker 4: ten thousand of those little things. So the pseudo pupil
Speaker 4: is a dark dot. It looks like it's moving as
Speaker 4: the manta's head turns, but that's just a spot that's
Speaker 4: taking in more light and it can help you figure
Speaker 4: out where they're focusing on and if they're looking at
Speaker 4: you in case you're wondering like if a mantis is
Speaker 4: mad at you or ignoring you, But yeah, that's a
Speaker 4: pseudo pupil, and it's just a dark spot where light
Speaker 4: is being absorbed. They're probably not mad at you though,
Speaker 4: they're just maybe hunting. And many patrons including Margot Lewis,
Speaker 4: Olivia Lester, Hannegori, Pepito, light brown Pillow, Hope, Madeline, they
Speaker 4: all had limb questions and an Aaron Christie's words, how
Speaker 4: sharp are the claws? Like, can they skewer stuff? Are
Speaker 4: they very strong? What's their main killing mechanism?
Speaker 1: Can you tell us a little bit about how they
Speaker 1: have like essentially nails like in a two by four
Speaker 1: for arms.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and those raptorial fore legs are really powerful tools.
Speaker 5: So those spikes are really good at just trapping prey.
Speaker 5: And a lot of species. Between the species, a'll have
Speaker 5: differences in the shape and the count and the texture
Speaker 5: of those spines. So some species really have flat spines
Speaker 5: that are not like they're not really spines anymore. They're
Speaker 5: just flat little bulbs almost that look like and they
Speaker 5: really use it to just crush the prey that they grab.
Speaker 5: There's some species that actually stab their prey, so they're
Speaker 5: called wolverine mantises.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: They don't actually grab their prey. They just straight up
Speaker 5: spirit which is really metal.
Speaker 4: So as it flicks its spiked four limbs forward at
Speaker 4: one twentieth of a second, which Animal Planet told me
Speaker 4: is twice as fast as you can blink your eyes,
Speaker 4: the spikes on the femur gouge into the prey and
Speaker 4: then other spikes on the tibia clamp it down, and
Speaker 4: then they pull their limbs back in to start eating
Speaker 4: it alive. And I found a paper titled Prey speed
Speaker 4: Influences the Speed and Structures of reptorial strike of a
Speaker 4: sit and weight Predator, which used slow motion cameras on
Speaker 4: mantises and found that the speed of the strikes is
Speaker 4: really variable and sometimes based on if the prey is
Speaker 4: moving toward the mantis. They'll slow down mid strike in
Speaker 4: a just position to get that barbed clasp just right.
Speaker 5: So, yeah, there's a ton of variation. It's really incredible
Speaker 5: how many ways the same leg and the same sort
Speaker 5: of tools can be used to like do different things.
Speaker 1: Man, that is metal. It's funny. Right as you were
Speaker 1: saying that too, I glanced at a question from It's
Speaker 1: Just Sarah that asked does eating the male's head serve
Speaker 1: a purpose? Or is it just metal as fuck? So
Speaker 1: I don't know. Do they eat the head or do
Speaker 1: they leave the head like a pizza crust.
Speaker 5: Oh, if they eat the head, that's just the appetizer.
Speaker 5: They're gonna get to the rest eventually.
Speaker 1: Oh right, okay, okay, they eat the head first.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so you wanted to know specifically about not saving
Speaker 4: the head for dessert but going straight to it like
Speaker 4: cake for breakfast patrons. Deborah Gray, Matt Thompson, It's just Sarah,
Speaker 4: Alison gassek and Ak also Ali b and Pure and
Speaker 4: fred berg Bjorn wrote, I've heard that the female eats
Speaker 4: the male's head, but is that the only part? Why
Speaker 4: not eat the whole thing? Seems like a waste of
Speaker 4: good eaten?
Speaker 5: So when so, again, it does happen pretty rarely. That
Speaker 5: usually what will happen is when they eat the male's head.
Speaker 5: That causes the male to sort of just lock in
Speaker 5: because normally the males, you know, they want to mate
Speaker 5: and then find another female and then find another female,
Speaker 5: just try to keep mating as many females as they can.
Speaker 1: Welcome to f Boy Island.
Speaker 5: But some females just instead of that, they're like, well,
Speaker 5: just give me all the sperm and then I won't
Speaker 5: have to mate with more males and I can just
Speaker 5: deposit a nice big egg case right now.
Speaker 1: So she will eat his head to drain his goat
Speaker 1: ads and then grow his babies, and that is what
Speaker 1: I like to call partnership.
Speaker 5: So then just eat the head and also helps because
Speaker 5: she needs the energy those making those egg cases takes
Speaker 5: a lot out of her. I mean they're laying like
Speaker 5: one hundred plus eggs in some cases, so that's a
Speaker 5: lot to carry around. And maybe so very poignant that
Speaker 5: we're talking about this on Mother's Day for all the
Speaker 5: moms out there. Don't let anyone shave you for eating food.
Speaker 5: So mantis will do what they need to do, so
Speaker 5: you should too.
Speaker 1: If I were a grabed mantis, I would roll up
Speaker 1: on so many corn dogs there would be a global
Speaker 1: shortage of corn dogs, so many babies that made out
Speaker 1: of corn dogs. Have you birthed a baby listening to this?
Speaker 1: You made that thing out of cereal and nectarines and
Speaker 1: chicken nuggets? Good job? Are they laying those like one
Speaker 1: once a season or like one once a week?
Speaker 5: Oh, it's for some species it's every week. Every week
Speaker 5: they're laying forty to sixty eggs. Some species go for
Speaker 5: the all eggs in one basket strategy, like the Chinese mantises,
Speaker 5: and they'll do like two hundred and one egg mass
Speaker 5: and they'll usually lay one of those like every month
Speaker 5: or so. So it just depends.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then what is that egg mess made of
Speaker 1: because it's like the ones that I've seen. I think
Speaker 1: they're probably Chinese manch just this but it's like rock hard,
Speaker 1: but it looks like like foam, like insolation foam. Erica
Speaker 1: Flory and first time question askers Francesca Hernanda Singer and
Speaker 1: Piper Warnick and Helios had egg questions and in spicy
Speaker 1: Natives words, why do the uhikahs look so weird? Also,
Speaker 1: how does one pronounce uhika? Okay, so it's uh thiki
Speaker 1: according to low Heat.
Speaker 4: Now we know like if you were locked out of
Speaker 4: the house and then you found your higher key under
Speaker 4: a rock, you'd be like ooh ooh thiki.
Speaker 1: Sure mm hmm.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So we haven't done a lot of examination into
Speaker 5: the differences in the structures between some of the egg cases.
Speaker 5: So we generally know that there's a protein called oval
Speaker 5: bumin that's used to sort of shape it, and along
Speaker 5: with other proteins and compounds. How they actually are able
Speaker 5: to make it is always been sort of a mystery
Speaker 5: to me. Because they have these serce at the end
Speaker 5: of their abdomen that they use to sort of feel
Speaker 5: the shape.
Speaker 1: Circe are like butt fingers, and I love them, no, cap.
Speaker 5: Oh dad, But it's really like three D printing, and
Speaker 5: they're making this without looking at it. So if you
Speaker 5: imagine trying to mold like a vase without looking at
Speaker 5: it and then stuff it in a regular pattern with
Speaker 5: eggs and then steal it up on a stick, Oh
Speaker 5: my god. It's really a cool piece of bioengineering. And
Speaker 5: there's a lot of complicated structures that have to sort
Speaker 5: of work in tandem to make it happen. But yeah,
Speaker 5: you end up, like you said, this really hard structure
Speaker 5: that can protect the eggs for up to six months.
Speaker 4: Okay, so these things are generally about the size of
Speaker 4: a quarter, but some might be elongated and look kind
Speaker 4: of like a fossilized caterpillar with ridges, or depending on
Speaker 4: the species, they might look more globular, kind of like
Speaker 4: a small oak gall And if you look really closely,
Speaker 4: you can see ridging in them, kind of like they
Speaker 4: were pipetted out in waves of maternal contractions before they
Speaker 4: stiffened into their hard case. So think of like a
Speaker 4: really small three D printed dinner roll gorilla glued to.
Speaker 1: A fence or a branch. How do they make the
Speaker 1: glue that canher something for so long, Like is that
Speaker 1: being studied at all?
Speaker 5: I don't think anyone's looking into that unfortunately. So what's
Speaker 5: sort of what I was saying earlier. It's it's like
Speaker 5: really exciting because there's all this stuff that's untapped, and
Speaker 5: like I mean, as you see, like there's so many
Speaker 5: interesting things that you could like look at if if
Speaker 5: someone wanted to. There's just opportunities everywhere. So and then
Speaker 5: someone should do that and tell me because I want
Speaker 5: to know.
Speaker 1: Yes, you're like, shoot me an oe, Yeah, Sean Verbridge
Speaker 1: want to know how does their hearing work? And why
Speaker 1: can they only hear ultrasound? Is that true?
Speaker 5: Yes? So for those of you who don't know, mantuses
Speaker 5: have a cyclopean ear. So what that means is they
Speaker 5: have one singular ear drum. Not all the species have it.
Speaker 5: There's actually an entire group that's called the deaf mantises
Speaker 5: in Central and South America. But the mantiss that do
Speaker 5: have ears have one, and it's located between their middle
Speaker 5: and hind walking legs, so not those big reptorial legs,
Speaker 5: but those other pairs of legs. And yeah, what we
Speaker 5: know is that they're able to detect that sonar with it,
Speaker 5: So when males are going and flying and looking for
Speaker 5: females they hear a bat clicking at them, then they
Speaker 5: basically just drop and that's a good way for them
Speaker 5: to avoid that's predating upon them. But the weird part,
Speaker 5: and this is a very recent paper that come out
Speaker 5: that's sort of really exciting about this whole story, is
Speaker 5: that the origin of this ear predates the evolution of bats.
Speaker 5: So they were using it for something else and it
Speaker 5: was just co opted for bat escaping. What they used
Speaker 5: it for before or what they may also continue to use.
Speaker 4: It for now, we don't know one ear and it's
Speaker 4: in their crotch. Even if you lifted weights every day
Speaker 4: of your life, you cannot beat that bod. Why try now?
Speaker 4: Sean Furbridge, Danielle Suche, Alina Litten, they all had hearing questions.
Speaker 4: That's so thrilling to think that it's used for something
Speaker 4: that we just have no clue about.
Speaker 5: Weird, love it super weird? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What about Tony ben Venudi wants to know? Why do
Speaker 1: I see them sway or dance back and forth?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, so that's going to be their emotion parallax.
Speaker 5: So when they're gauging the depth or the distance to something.
Speaker 5: You'll see them do this in the forward and backward
Speaker 5: motion when they're stalking prey, especially again, that's just to
Speaker 5: gauge the distance. You'll see them definitely do it before
Speaker 5: they jump. So if you see a mantis hanging off
Speaker 5: a stick or at the edge of a sidewalk or
Speaker 5: something and it's really wave in back and forth, it
Speaker 5: might be thinking about jumping up to you because you're
Speaker 5: a giant tree. They need to be able to look
Speaker 5: her up.
Speaker 1: So patrons, helios and Muni pesnane, that's why they're swaying.
Speaker 1: And as for dancing, first time question asker McCalla, Maystrick
Speaker 1: and Fedge who asked, why can't we hear the music?
Speaker 1: They're swaying too, postulating that it feels like R and B,
Speaker 1: but maybe not. They're just on that dance floor. They're
Speaker 1: moving their dang bodies and they're swiveling their heads to
Speaker 1: leer it prey just like old school creeps at a
Speaker 1: disco teche. That's nuts. So it might do more when
Speaker 1: they're near us because they're trying to figure out what
Speaker 1: our deal is too, right, Yeah, let's get to a
Speaker 1: more serious question. Kalia Alahi wants to know who would
Speaker 1: win in a fight a cat size praying mantis or
Speaker 1: an actual cat.
Speaker 5: I love cats, but I gotta I gotta say it's
Speaker 5: the mantis. Yeah. Yeah, they take some shockingly. And I
Speaker 5: say this as someone who's seen a lot of this,
Speaker 5: like it still shocks me that they take stuff as
Speaker 5: big as frogs and snakes and stuff.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, well this is this is a little bit timely.
Speaker 1: But Rye of the Tiger wanted to know, walking alone
Speaker 1: in the woods, would you rather run into a bear
Speaker 1: or a bear sized mantis?
Speaker 5: Oh? My god, the bear?
Speaker 1: Really?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, there's a bear sized mantis that would just
Speaker 5: try to eat me, there's no question about it.
Speaker 1: Also winged right, so you can't outrun that.
Speaker 5: And then at that point's too later. So I would
Speaker 5: take the bear.
Speaker 1: Yeah, take the bear. Take the bear. What about for you?
Speaker 1: Rive the Tiger also wants to know if you could
Speaker 1: mutate and take one trait of mantids for yourself, what
Speaker 1: supermanted power would you choose.
Speaker 5: Oh hmm, that's a really good question. I would take
Speaker 5: color changing. Pardon me, So mantises are able to color match,
Speaker 5: and not every species can do this, but a lot
Speaker 5: of them can. So they're able to change color within
Speaker 5: an in star or through in stars to match the
Speaker 5: background that they're hunting on. I think that'd be pretty cool.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I didn't know that they could do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, what can't they do is the question?
Speaker 5: Yeah, taxes mostly.
Speaker 4: But patron Charlotte Parkinson asked, I feel they would suit
Speaker 4: a top hat, maybe a monocle. Thoughts Charlotte, affirmative. Now
Speaker 4: what about the rest of their public image? Some of
Speaker 4: you had pop culture questions, such as Natalie Brissou, Celia Sanislo,
Speaker 4: Paulina Krasinska, and Nicole Kleman.
Speaker 1: For example, what about Tyra Pieria and a few others
Speaker 1: to know what's the most accurate screen depiction of a
Speaker 1: manted film or TV? Someone else asked about a bug's
Speaker 1: life in Manny.
Speaker 5: Any thoughts, Oh, okay, love Manny. He's great. I think
Speaker 5: he would just eat his mate, even though you know,
Speaker 5: usually femalechanism, but he's a mantis. So as far as
Speaker 5: accurate portrayal, I would say there's a documentary sort of
Speaker 5: early two thousands on Discovery Channel that was quite good.
Speaker 5: I think a lot of documentaries tend to very dramaticize
Speaker 5: mantis's and definitely they make up the scenes like they
Speaker 5: put the insects together in ways that they normally wouldn't.
Speaker 7: Be with lightning, fast reflexes, it nabs a meal and
Speaker 7: a blink of an eye, then casually devours its victim
Speaker 7: while it is still alive. From humid tropics to arid
Speaker 7: deserts to your own backyard, the praying Mattis makes its
Speaker 7: presence known. It's alien like features have made it feared,
Speaker 7: revered and misunderstood.
Speaker 1: And that was from two thousand and one a program
Speaker 1: called Alien Insects. It's campy, but it's informative and it's realistic,
Speaker 1: but not all nature films are.
Speaker 5: And I can sort of tell us someone who's like
Speaker 5: seeing mantis behavior before that, you know, the mantises like
Speaker 5: normally wouldn't be in that position, or they wouldn't behave
Speaker 5: that way unless they were stressed or something like that.
Speaker 4: Just keeping them inside stressed them out. Patron Greg Wallach
Speaker 4: asked do they like us? And others including Ellie's Weebel,
Speaker 4: Susan's Lester and Lynn, Margo Lewis and Felix, as well
Speaker 4: as Tiana Floria and twenty three Schedoo asked a ton
Speaker 4: of people wanted to know about captivity the ethics of it.
Speaker 4: Zoey Lytton said, ore, manton's a good pet if you
Speaker 4: are enchanted by mantus'es. Tell us a little bit about
Speaker 4: becoming roommates with some.
Speaker 5: The great roommates quiet clean, generally respectful, though I do
Speaker 5: get the odd threat display from that from time to time.
Speaker 5: Mantis is, I think, are a great pets in general,
Speaker 5: just because they take up the little space and the
Speaker 5: setup for them is very It can be as cheap
Speaker 5: or as expensive as you want to make it. You
Speaker 5: can keep them in anything from like a small cup
Speaker 5: with sticks to this really nice plant in a bavarium.
Speaker 5: I think the important thing to consider is what mantis
Speaker 5: you want to get, whether it's native or non native.
Speaker 5: And if it's not native, then you have to be
Speaker 5: sure that you're doing a good job of you know,
Speaker 5: making sure it's contained, it's not going to get out
Speaker 5: or something like that. And generally, I mean, I would say,
Speaker 5: in terms of the ethics of owning a mantis, I
Speaker 5: mean they are you know, insects, so there's no like
Speaker 5: excessive paperwork to keep an exotic species or something like that.
Speaker 5: But I just generally try to be respectful, like I
Speaker 5: try to make sure I'm on top of their care
Speaker 5: and stuff like that, and I think it's just a
Speaker 5: good policy with any pet, you know, just make sure
Speaker 5: you're meeting their needs.
Speaker 4: Again, all amazing advice for relationships partnerships. Also, you know,
Speaker 4: you mentioned something about native versus non native too. Robin
Speaker 4: Cohen wanted to know how worried do you think we
Speaker 4: should be about non native versus native mantids in the US.
Speaker 5: That's a great question. So the non native species, unfortunately
Speaker 5: just tend to be bigger than the native species wherever
Speaker 5: they end up being. I would say at this point,
Speaker 5: just because most of the non native species have been
Speaker 5: here for so long, there's not really much we can
Speaker 5: do unless there's a whole concerted effort to really go
Speaker 5: out find the eggs, pull them up, to actually get
Speaker 5: rid of them. I would say, if you find one outside,
Speaker 5: you could totally keep it as a pet because they're
Speaker 5: great pets. And if you happen to see one, don't
Speaker 5: feel the need to, you know, do anything unless you
Speaker 5: want to. Like I was mentioning Carolina. Mantus's do tend
Speaker 5: to get pushed out when Chinese mantus has move in,
Speaker 5: so you might consider removing Chinese manta said cases, if
Speaker 5: you see them, for example, in the broad scale, it's
Speaker 5: not going to make too much of a difference. They're
Speaker 5: kind of here to stay in. Whatever damage or impact
Speaker 5: they may have had it, it's already happened for the
Speaker 5: most part, and we're sort of seeing just a little
Speaker 5: bit of the downstream effects.
Speaker 4: Mantises. They're here and you might as well love them forever.
Speaker 4: So they don't eat your dog. That's flim flam.
Speaker 1: They can't do that. Don't spread that. Let's bust some
Speaker 1: other lives while we're here.
Speaker 4: Mad Madam, Mim, Holly Coool, Keegan Newman, Jeffrey Vanderlib and
Speaker 4: first time question asker Mary Leo asked in their words,
Speaker 4: I grew up thinking praying mantessses were endangered and only
Speaker 4: recently discovered they are not, and actually never were on
Speaker 4: the endangered species species list? Where did that myth come from?
Speaker 1: Are you aware of it?
Speaker 5: Yes? I have heard this, actually definitely. People have asked
Speaker 5: me this because I keep mantuss so they're like, oh,
Speaker 5: are any of them dangered. I think a lot of
Speaker 5: it comes from mantus is just being scarce to find.
Speaker 5: Of all the insects, I think they tend to be
Speaker 5: of the least commonly observed unless you're specifically going out
Speaker 5: to look for them. And that's of course because of
Speaker 5: how they are. They like to be reclusive, they like
Speaker 5: to hide, they want to stay away from the open
Speaker 5: areas because that's when they can't use their camouflage. So
Speaker 5: mantises are not endangered that as we currently know. I
Speaker 5: will say there could be some potential concern for some
Speaker 5: species could be on that list, partially due to climate change,
Speaker 5: have aitech destruction, and the lack of taxonomic work done
Speaker 5: that those.
Speaker 4: Species are in the minority and most of the time
Speaker 4: they're not gone, they're just hiding from you and their lunch.
Speaker 5: So one of the major issues that mantuses have had here,
Speaker 5: and this kind of is why people think we have
Speaker 5: so few in the United States, is we thought that
Speaker 5: mantus's we're not very diverse here. So just if you
Speaker 5: go back ten years, we rewind the taxonomic clock, there
Speaker 5: was only about fourteen species actually described in the US.
Speaker 5: But basically what happened in the past decade is this
Speaker 5: has been huge revival to sort of look at old
Speaker 5: taxonomic works and resample and reassess the diversity. And we're
Speaker 5: finding a lot more new species than we had previously thought.
Speaker 5: And so with that, of course means that, Okay, well,
Speaker 5: now that we thought this this species, let's say Species
Speaker 5: A took up a giant range, and now we realize
Speaker 5: it's actually species BCD and E. So now it's so
Speaker 5: much more pressing concern to sort of start looking up
Speaker 5: populations of these species with regards to invasive species and
Speaker 5: habitat destruction and stuff.
Speaker 4: Okay, so that's their future, but what about their past?
Speaker 4: First time question asker Ulia Veranos wonders were they ever
Speaker 4: huge and hairy? And Kelly Toler wanted to know where
Speaker 4: they're truly giant mantis back in the days of the
Speaker 4: dinosaurs or is that a myth?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 5: So it's weird because we actually haven't found giant mantis
Speaker 5: fossils yet. I will say it's not that they couldn't exist.
Speaker 5: The part of the problem is the mantises that tend
Speaker 5: to get preserved from the dinosaur eras in amber and
Speaker 5: stuff like that. Tend to be bark mantis species, but
Speaker 5: bark mimicry has evolved multiple times across the.
Speaker 4: Group, and with so many mantis is evolving to look
Speaker 4: like tree bark, which is genius. A fossilized mantis or
Speaker 4: one trapped in amber looks like some existing species, because
Speaker 4: looking like a dead leaf, that's just good business.
Speaker 1: So it's a big shrug because.
Speaker 5: It could represent a revolution of that group, it could
Speaker 5: represent a really old group. And if we don't have
Speaker 5: these really giant mantises that we sometimes see here like
Speaker 5: that size or bigger preserved, we don't know if they
Speaker 5: existed or not. So that's part of the challenge.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so should you construct a time machine to spy
Speaker 4: on giant ancient mantids. You may be disappointed. You could
Speaker 4: have just revisited your high school senior year trip to
Speaker 4: the water slides instead, But don't be sad. Everyone probably
Speaker 4: peas in those anyway.
Speaker 1: It's a bummer. What about Jennifer R. I want to
Speaker 1: know what praise on a praying mantis? Does anyone eat
Speaker 1: one of them?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Definitely, birds, other mantis, spiders, Jumping spiders surprisingly are
Speaker 5: quite good at catching really big mantises. So it's weird
Speaker 5: to think about because I mean, of course they will
Speaker 5: lead like a small nym or something, but just because
Speaker 5: big mantises tend to be i'll say, more bold, and
Speaker 5: because they tend to be looking forward about their area
Speaker 5: versus jumping spiders. They you know, they'll be looking down
Speaker 5: from a perch or something. They can get ambush really easy.
Speaker 5: Like I've seen images of like jumping spider from Indonesia
Speaker 5: that caught a mantis like five six times its size
Speaker 5: and it just got it on the neck. So I
Speaker 5: was able to just get it instantly. It is incredible.
Speaker 5: So it's it's a buggy bug world there. So yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: it's a lot of stuff eats mantises, but it just depends. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, it's a battle out there. Okay. Worst thing about
Speaker 1: mantis is worst thing about keeping them, worst thing about
Speaker 1: being a mantis researcher and friend to mantis' that's tough.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so being the lorax of the mantis is kind
Speaker 5: of hard. I'm growing the mustache. It's been challenging because
Speaker 5: I think so as we were talking about, because not
Speaker 5: a lot of work has been done and there's so
Speaker 5: a few people working on them actively it's been hard
Speaker 5: to find places that will let me continue to work
Speaker 5: on them, and to no fault of any advisor, I
Speaker 5: totally understand that. But then when it comes to the research,
Speaker 5: there's a lot less relative to other groups of insects,
Speaker 5: and so it's navigating that has been a little bit challenging.
Speaker 5: But I mean, there are a few people, and so
Speaker 5: I've been able to find my niches, as it were,
Speaker 5: to continue my research along.
Speaker 1: I'm so surprised that being a mantis researcher isn't like
Speaker 1: being a marine biologist, Like I can't believe people do descrubbing, like,
Speaker 1: you know what. I want to be a mantis researcher
Speaker 1: because they're so cool, you know what I mean. I
Speaker 1: find them to be like the dolphins of the insect world.
Speaker 1: They're mysterious. What are they doing? They look weird. You'd
Speaker 1: think everyone would just be rushing straight to the mantis
Speaker 1: sign up desk.
Speaker 5: I would love it if people do it. In ten
Speaker 5: fifteen years, if I'm my own lab, you know, I
Speaker 5: would hope people do that. I totally agree. I mean,
Speaker 5: I think they're they're definitely calling them the charismatic microfauna.
Speaker 5: I guess people do like mantises, and but I think
Speaker 5: I think it's sort of because we have the like
Speaker 5: people have these preconceived notions about, oh, we don't have
Speaker 5: many here in the US, and they you know, we
Speaker 5: know they cannibalize, but that's kind of like what everyone
Speaker 5: thinks about them, and so they kind of just tend
Speaker 5: to write them off. Is not doing much more than that.
Speaker 5: And part of what's been really exciting for me and
Speaker 5: talking with people and you know, being able to share
Speaker 5: the speaking for the mantises as it were, is to
Speaker 5: sort of show that, you know, there's these other aspects
Speaker 5: to them that that people sort of are overlooking or
Speaker 5: are not privy to. And I like being able to
Speaker 5: share that with people. It's really cool.
Speaker 1: And if someone wants to become praying Manta's parent, should
Speaker 1: they reach out to anywhere in particular? Is there a
Speaker 1: list of like reputable breeder is there anything like that
Speaker 1: or or is it just like if you see one
Speaker 1: out in the wild, maybe take it in from it.
Speaker 5: Yeah. I know that people at like reptile shows and
Speaker 5: stuff will often have some mantises that you could get
Speaker 5: as a pet. You can always google places that might
Speaker 5: ship at pet mantises if they do like exotic species,
Speaker 5: but I myself as someone who's kept a lot of
Speaker 5: exotic mantises in my past, and I still do. But
Speaker 5: I've really, I've been really just astounded and had a
Speaker 5: great time just keeping native species. This past year, I've
Speaker 5: really tried to keep as many different native species as
Speaker 5: I could, and it's just been a really great opportunity
Speaker 5: to appreciate endemic biodiversity because I think, and I know,
Speaker 5: tropics have great wildlife. I'm not bashing on the tropics
Speaker 5: at all, but I think it's really easy to lose
Speaker 5: sight of how many beautiful animals we have here when
Speaker 5: we keep thinking about the stuff that's elsewhere. You know,
Speaker 5: the grass can be green on both sides, so you know,
Speaker 5: you keep going out to some of these places and
Speaker 5: you might find something new, ever, know.
Speaker 1: Oh, what about your favorite thing about them? Your favorite
Speaker 1: thing about being a scientist in this field?
Speaker 5: Oh, I'll answer has two parts. So my favorite thing
Speaker 5: about mantis's, I think is just there by like how
Speaker 5: diverse they are in terms of their behavior and morphology
Speaker 5: and their life history. So being able to keep them
Speaker 5: and learn new things about them as they watch them
Speaker 5: develop and grow is always really exciting because then I
Speaker 5: can sort of when I go into the field, then
Speaker 5: I can piece that to my sampling, and that can
Speaker 5: helps me navigate and find them in the environment. And
Speaker 5: about research, I think the greatest thing about research is
Speaker 5: being able to speak with people in other fields, because
Speaker 5: there's an infinite a near infinite amount of knowledge, and
Speaker 5: as someone who's just generally curious, my focus is just
Speaker 5: on the stuff that I know very well, because that's
Speaker 5: the stuff I can research and answer questions about. And
Speaker 5: I like learning new things. But you know, unfortunately, as
Speaker 5: I'm sure you'll agree, it's hard to have the time
Speaker 5: to learn about everything. So being able to speak with
Speaker 5: other people about their research and what they do and
Speaker 5: having a new perspective has been really really exciting, because
Speaker 5: I think the world in general just works better when
Speaker 5: everyone's talking and communicating together and working together towards a solution.
Speaker 5: But for science especially so just because everyone comes at
Speaker 5: the same problem in so many different ways and it's
Speaker 5: just sort of interesting hearing those differences.
Speaker 1: Would you have any advice for, like, anyone else who
Speaker 1: wants to get into this field. If someone's like I
Speaker 1: want to.
Speaker 5: Do that, Yeah, I mean I would say, if for science,
Speaker 5: just find something that you're really passionate about. I think
Speaker 5: that's the thing that really helped me be able to
Speaker 5: stick with Mantiss, because there was actually a point where
Speaker 5: I was concer not continuing with them, at least temporarily,
Speaker 5: just because it was hard to find positions. But I
Speaker 5: just kept kept trying to stick with it, and you know,
Speaker 5: eventually it worked out. But if you're if you're really
Speaker 5: passionate about something, I mean, you'll have to spend a
Speaker 5: lot of time thinking and working with this thing that
Speaker 5: you're studying. And so if you really really love it,
Speaker 5: it's really not going to feel like work because it's
Speaker 5: going to be so exciting every time you see something new,
Speaker 5: every time you collect a new piece of data and
Speaker 5: run an analysis and start writing. It's going to be
Speaker 5: really really exciting because you're satisfying a pure curiosity that
Speaker 5: you have and that'll just, you know, take you wherever
Speaker 5: you need to go. Wherever you end up, you'll be
Speaker 5: in exactly the right place because you're doing it because
Speaker 5: you want to.
Speaker 1: That's such great advice, Like literally everyone planet, not just researchs.
Speaker 4: I know several people want to know personally, your favorite
Speaker 4: mantis looking at you, Sarah Metzker and other promanted folks
Speaker 4: including Nina eve See, Felipa, jim and Is, Susan Singley,
Speaker 4: and Valerie Bertha, who asked favorite one. I know that's hard,
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, but yeah, like, is there one that is
Speaker 4: that is your secret favorite?
Speaker 5: Yeah, so it's hard to choose between twenty five hundred
Speaker 5: of your favorite kids. But yeah, my favorite mantis is
Speaker 5: in that genus. It's a Toxidera bay are i, So
Speaker 5: that's the moss dragon mantis. There's a lot of cool
Speaker 5: species in that genus. There's one that looks like a flower,
Speaker 5: for example, but I just always thought that that species,
Speaker 5: in particular, Toxidera bay are i, just really encapsulated that
Speaker 5: draconic look to me, and the mossy protrusions and coloration
Speaker 5: that it has are just so intricate. It's it's really beautiful.
Speaker 5: It's a really beautiful animal.
Speaker 1: Have you ever had one?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 5: Unfortunately not. I wish if I. I mean, that's one
Speaker 5: of the mantises that I hope to see in the
Speaker 5: wild at some point in my career because they're just very,
Speaker 5: very special. They're really restricted to highland ranges in Southeast Asia.
Speaker 5: So of course with the climate change and have tut destruction,
Speaker 5: they are very prone to potentially losing their population. And
Speaker 5: they also only have a few nymphs at a time,
Speaker 5: so each ed case only has four to eight individuals
Speaker 5: and they lay maybe four in their lifetime, and they
Speaker 5: grow very slow, so they're really specialized and reliant on
Speaker 5: having this nice cloud forest habitat and enough butterflies to eat,
Speaker 5: and with both of those and specialists in general just
Speaker 5: have a tough time when times get tough. So I'm
Speaker 5: hoping that I can get one to see one in
Speaker 5: my lifetime. That would be amazing and I'd probably die
Speaker 5: on the spot, but it would be totally worth it.
Speaker 1: Do you have any plans at some point to go
Speaker 1: to that region get your hiking booths on?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 5: I would love to. I've been really fortunate that in
Speaker 5: my career I've been able to go to a couple
Speaker 5: different places. So I've been to Belize and more recently
Speaker 5: I went to South America and went to Guyana. I
Speaker 5: haven't been collecting in Asia yet. I've gone back to
Speaker 5: visit India, and you know, when I was younger and
Speaker 5: have found the odd mantis and stuff, but never for
Speaker 5: a scientific expedition, and so I'd be really really excited
Speaker 5: to go to Malaysia or Thailand and collect because yes,
Speaker 5: super exciting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and how can people find you in general to
Speaker 1: keep following your work or to invite you on amantis?
Speaker 5: I will. I will join any safari in general, but
Speaker 5: a safari especially, so I'm definitely on board. You can.
Speaker 5: My instagram is just at mantodiology. I guess that'll be
Speaker 5: the title of the episode anyway, So be easy and
Speaker 5: you'll find all my updates and stuff on there. I
Speaker 5: usually try to post macro photography as well as research
Speaker 5: updates on what I'm doing, and just stuff about mantises.
Speaker 5: So if you're interested in any of those things, you
Speaker 5: are welcome to join and chat and take what you will.
Speaker 1: I love your account.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 1: As soon as soon as I saw something from you,
Speaker 1: I was like, oh I Within like a minute, I
Speaker 1: was like, hey, are you available? You want to talk
Speaker 1: this weekend? What do you do tomorrow? Are you around tomorrow?
Speaker 1: What about the day after you said yes, I was
Speaker 1: so excited.
Speaker 5: Oh, I was so excited. I was like, oh my god,
Speaker 5: it's the ologies. Tolly Ward.
Speaker 4: So ask mantis people many questions, because have you ever
Speaker 4: loved a mantid more than you do?
Speaker 1: Right now?
Speaker 4: I'm gonna guess no. And for more on Lohite, you
Speaker 4: can find him of course on Instagram at Mentotiology, where
Speaker 4: he posts gorgeous photos and videos of mantids that are
Speaker 4: great to look at and also very educational, highly recommended,
Speaker 4: easy to find. It's just the title of this episode
Speaker 4: to handle mentodiology, and we are at ologies there and
Speaker 4: on x I'm on platforms everywhere, as Ali ward. You
Speaker 4: can find smologies so shorter, classroom friendly ologies episodes wherever
Speaker 4: you find podcasts. Just look for that colorful new logo
Speaker 4: designed by Bonnie Dutch. We also link to these kid
Speaker 4: friendly shorter Somologies episodes in the show notes, so please
Speaker 4: subscribe and tell your friends with kiddos who need it
Speaker 4: in its own dedicated feed without swearing. Those episodes come
Speaker 4: out on Thursdays there, but we come out on Tuesdays.
Speaker 4: So we have ologies merch at ologiesmerch dot com. We
Speaker 4: have hats and shirts and socks. You can join Patreon
Speaker 4: at patreon dot com sash Ologies and submit questions for
Speaker 4: upcoming episodes, as well as join discussions with me about
Speaker 4: episodes that just came out. I love looking at your
Speaker 4: comments and writing back. Thank you to Aaron Talbert, who
Speaker 4: admin Theology's podcast Facebook group. Aveline Malick in the word
Speaker 4: to remakes our professional transcripts Kelly R. Dwyerd is the website.
Speaker 4: Noel Dilaworth is our scheduling producer. Susan Hale is our
Speaker 4: managing director. Jake Chafy edits huge thanks to Jared Sleeper,
Speaker 4: who gifted me Mirabell the Mantis and made me love
Speaker 4: mantads forever. And another keeper is lead editor Mercedes Maitland
Speaker 4: of Maitland Audio. Nick Thorburn wrote the theme music. And
Speaker 4: if you stick around to the end, I tell you
Speaker 4: a secret. And one secret is let's hear it speaking
Speaker 4: of my yard and the things that live in it.
Speaker 4: There's this one grasshopper, like a big chonker, like two
Speaker 4: three inches long, and it hangs out on the screen
Speaker 4: of the window in the living room, and we'll see
Speaker 4: it for like a week at a time. It'll just
Speaker 4: be on the screen and we know it's the same
Speaker 4: one because it's missing a leg and we don't know why.
Speaker 4: It's just hanging out on the screen, just clinging to
Speaker 4: it all day. It'll be back the next day. Sometimes
Speaker 4: it'll be gone for a week and then back. I
Speaker 4: need to talk to a grasshopper person to tell me
Speaker 4: is this the same one? It's got to be the
Speaker 4: same one.
Speaker 1: Is it hanging out on.
Speaker 4: The screen door because it lost its leg in a
Speaker 4: valiant battle? Do we just have an awesome screen door.
Speaker 4: I don't know what's going on with it, and I
Speaker 4: haven't seen it in a few days, and that makes
Speaker 4: me sad. Also, in my office, I have so many spiders.
Speaker 4: I love every single one of them. I counted seven
Speaker 4: webs the last time around. You know what they eat
Speaker 4: for me? All kinds of books. I'm not in there
Speaker 4: with any raid, I'll tell you that much. I got
Speaker 4: spiders for that. I outsourced it.
Speaker 1: I'm not pest. It's a buffet in there, and I
Speaker 1: wouldn't have it any other way anyway. So how to
Speaker 1: your bugs? Okay? I love them too?
Speaker 6: By right, pack a germatology, they do zoology, lithology, no technology, meteorology, technology, ceriology, sinology.
Speaker 1: We don't have to fight each other's heads off here
Speaker 1: get value.
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