Revelations from a Praying Mantis

There were few opportunities to get outdoors and enjoy photography this week due to the weather.  Being that it is mid to late September, one would expect pumpkin spice, sweatshirt type of weather.  Not so, we got our first rain since August on September 22nd and the temperatures have sat at the lower 90s.  Given these circumstances, I chose to remain at home enjoying the air conditioning.

When I did go out to gather the mail,  I was suprised by a four to five inch long praying mantis scaling the wall of my home.  While I enjoy photographing all kinds of wildlife, I have taken very few photos of insects, and to have such an unusual visitor come to me was quite an honor.   Since I don't see a praying mantis often I was curious to learn more about them.  Immediately, I discovered that I have been misspelling their name which is "praying" and not "preying".  While preying is what they really do as one of the world's most prolific insect killers,  I doubt whether they have any ethical feelings about their behavior that would cause them to pray.  In fact, their method of disposing of their prey is to bite their heads and suck out their brains.  ( I can recall sitting through long meetings where the speaker, a decendant of the mantid genus, sucked out the brains of the participants as they were held captive.)  

They hold their front legs in a folded position which makes them appear to be praying.  Those front legs are armed with spines that are used to grasp their prey securely while they use their camouflage and slow movements to spring suddenly upon their prey.  Of the 1500 mantids worldwide, only 20 are found in the US and of those 20, only three are found here in the upper midwest.  This guy is a Chinese Mantis which was likely introduced to the US in the late 1800s to help control garden insects.

It's nice to know that I could gain such revelations from a prehistoric, religious looking creature scaling the walls of my home on a sorching fall day.