A little praying mantis flew onto my table just before I was preparing to retire for the day. In the end, in an attempt to take pictures of this marvellously wicked looking creature, I slept at 3.30am. It seemed similar to the one I caught last time, and I'm glad I have learnt better photography ethics since then, having enclosed it in a container previously...Praying mantises are exclusively predators despite their seemingly holy name; "praying" comes from its prayer-like stance due to its modified forelimbs while mantis is a Greek word for prophet.
They are also notoriously known for their sexual cannibalistic behavior, where some female mantises species will decapitate their mate after copulation and devour them. Quite a controversial topic, some said it as male sacrifice to increase the fecundity of the female to increase the survival of their offspring, others said it might just be a form of female rapacity and many other theories which I should not bore u with.
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