Tuesday, February 8, 2011

The Mantis Revisited

Shown two already a while back, but there were a few more I never showed here, so here's all of them...

I did want to capture another quite surprising detail of these creatures, but I haven't seen one around lately.

The inside of the front legs have a colored patch, a very bright reflective blue, green and yellow, something you wouldn't expect on an insect that's completely brown. The mantis is probably mimicking a flower with it when she opens up those front legs, mesmerising some unsuspecting insect... 'oooh, pretty'... right before it's staked and eaten alive...

But as you can see on these photos, the legs are firmly shut. I saw the coloring only later, when I didn't have the camera close by...











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