Sure , you ’ve heard of the Praying Mantis . But have you adjoin its cousin , Pseudocreobotra wahlbergii , also know as the Spiny Flower Mantis ? We stumbled upon its photo during an image search and had to discover out more . Here are a few things to know about this beautiful , terrifying - look worm .
1.This diminutive hemipteron measures between 1 to 2 inches and is aboriginal to southerly and Eastern Africa .
2.Nymphs , like the one shown above , have an tip-tilted abdomen . adult have a large yellow helical ocellus on their forewings .
3.When they ’re first born , nymph are mostly black and look almost like ants .
4.Nymphs will exuviate more or less every two week ; the fourth dimension between molts gradually increase as the mantids get closer to adulthood . During molting , a mantis hang upside down , sometimes shaking , and eventually jiggle out of its skin . It takes seven molting for a female to reach matureness , and six molts for male .
5.When threatened , the dirt ball lift their forewings , which makes them bet like a much larger tool with big , golden eyes . This is called a deimatic display , and it looks like this :
I would n’t want to run into that guy in an alley — would you ?
6.Instead of look for for prey , P.wahlbergiiprefers to snatch its meals — usually pollinating insects — from the air :
7.Females have small spines on the edge of their wing cases ; males do not . The male has slightly longer antennae and eight segment on its abdomen ( females will have six or seven ) . An easy path to tell males from female person is to look at the duration of their wing : A female person ’s wings will reach to the final stage of her abdomen , while a male ’s wings will extend past it .
8.Like other mantis coinage , the Spiny Flower Mantis iscannibalistic . As usual , it ’s the male person who have the most to reverence ; the websiteMantisKingdom.comrecommends feeding the female before set a male in the cage behind her :
After the human action is done , the site suggests scram the male out of the coop cursorily , or else he ’ll become a meal .
