How Mantises Became Nature’s Strangest Assassins

[A white and pink praying mantis that resembles flower petals holds and eats a cockroach.]

JESSICA WARE (Curator, Division of Invertebrate Zoology): Have you ever seen a killer flower? 

[A brown, leaf-like mantis strikes at an insect on the ground.]

WARE: A deadly dead leaf? 

[A brown, twig-like mantis eats a winged insect.]

WARE: A homicidal stick? 

[Well camouflaged against lichen-covered tree bark, a mottled mantis jumps into motion, grabbing a caterpillar that crawls nearby.]

WARE: The mantis is a master of disguise. 

[A yellowish mantis, camouflaged on a piece of yellowish grass, perches very still and then suddenly strikes at an insect.]

WARE: Unlike many animals that use camouflage to hide from predators, mantises are serious hunters who also deploy it to better ambush their prey. 

[A green mantis, camouflaged on a leaf, springs into motion, catching an insect with its spiky forelegs.]

WARE: With a flick of their forelegs, these carnivores can go from disguised to deadly, 

[A mantis sits on a hummingbird feeder and lunges (but misses) when a hummingbird flies near. Another mantis holds and eats a small frog.]

WARE: …even going after much larger prey like birds, mammals, and other vertebrates. 

[A slender mantis perches on a single thin stalk of grass, seamlessly blending in.]

WARE: But they didn’t always have such spectacularly cryptic looks. 

[Close-up of a hand drawing a very simple bug—two ovals for a head and body, two eyes, two antennae, and six stick legs.]

WARE: If you were asked to quickly draw a bug, you’d probably end up with something like a mantis ancestor—

[On-screen text: Reconstruction of ancient mantis ancestor]

[A realistic, computer-assisted rendering of a mantis ancestor with a round head, medium-sized eyes, simple branching antennae, and long brown wings that extend slightly past the abdomen.]

WARE: …a generally oval-shaped thing with no fancy forelimbs or transfixing stare. Basically, a sack with legs.

[A mantis blends in with lichen covered tree bark. It has a relatively simple body plan that is reminiscent of the computer reconstruction shown previously.]

WARE: But from that basic blob, mantises have evolved into eye-popping predators. 

[A small mantis nymph displays bold multi-colored stripes and a bulbous, spiky thorax, and twitches its body and forelimbs in almost dance-like motions.]

[A series of three mantises that are different species, but all have camouflaged bodies that look like brown dead leaves.]

WARE: And all over the world, strikingly similar adaptations have appeared in independent lineages. 

[Black and white slow motion footage from a lab experiment shows top and side views of a mantis striking at a fly.]

WARE: Now, researchers are using new tools to get a closer look at just what makes these insects such impressive hunters. 

[A mantis in a lab hangs upside down from a platform, munching on a roach.]

WARE: The answers may be surprising…

[Close-up of a green praying mantis sitting on pavement. It looks up and then moves its head to look towards the camera.]

[Title animation: INSECTARIUM]

[On-screen text: American Museum of Natural History]

[Host Jessica Ware speaks to camera in the Museum’s entomology research collection. Beside her are drawers of pinned mantis specimens.]

DIRECTOR [off-camera]: So, mantises, they’re all hunters, right?

[On-screen text: Jessica Ware, Ph.D.| Curator, American Museum of Natural History]

WARE: Yeah, so that’s one thing that’s universal for mantises is that they are predators. That’s their lifestyle. That’s their strategy. They bought into that, hundy.

[Various mantises with varied body types—one striped with horns, one flower-like, one mimicking an ant, one stick-like.]

WARE: While their body shapes can be wildly different, there are some commonalities that make them good hunters. 

[Extreme close-up of a green mantis’ face. Its huge eyes look into the camera and it then quickly turns its head to give a side view of its elongated face. A brown mantis blends into dead grass and sticks covering the ground. It swivels its head from side to side, surveying the landscape.]

WARE: They have stereo vision—incredibly rare in the invertebrate world—and specialized head movements that sharpen their depth perception. 

[Ware speaks to camera between rows of cabinets in the Museum entomology collections.] 

DIRECTOR [off-camera]: It feels like nature probably has a reason for that. Why is that advantageous for mantises?

WARE: So, mantises are really visual predators. Basically, need to be able to just kind of scan their surroundings. 

[Close up of tweezers offering a fly to a mantis nymph. The mantis’ head tracks the fly’s movement and then it strikes with its forelimbs.]

WARE: And they need to have flexibility when they’re aiming at prey.

[A reddish-purple mantis moves one of its forelegs forward, revealing rows of dramatic spikes. A green mantis strikes at a large black and white butterfly, pulling it forward as it beats its wings.]

WARE: Importantly, they also have these “raptorial” forelegs—spiky appendages that let them strike and hold prey. 

[Ware speaks to camera in the collections room, next to open drawers containing mantis specimens.]

[On-screen text: Entomology Department | American Museum of Natural History]

WARE: Mantises tend to be- a lot of them are kind of sit-and-wait predators. 

[Various shots of mantises posed in near stillness, waiting for prey.]

WARE: So, they will sit kind of perched with their forelegs ready, and then when a prey item comes by, they shoot part of their raptorial forelegs forward. 

[A flower-like praying mantis, camouflaged on a purple and white orchid strikes and catches a fly.]

[Ware speaks to camera in the entomology collections. She moves her arms and hands in imitation of the mantises’ striking movement—flicking her hands out, palms down.]

WARE: It’s kind of remarkable, the force that they can do with this structure. Right? 

DIRECTOR [off-camera]: That’s an awkward motion. For a human. For a human.

WARE: Yeah, I was gonna say. I mean, I haven’t evolved to do this. If I had spent 135 million years evolving to do it, maybe I’d be better at it.

[Close-up of a mantis flicking out a foreleg to catch a cricket and pulling it in towards its mouth.]

WARE: But, the prey item, boop, gets caught and they bring the forelegs up to the mandibles, to the mouthparts. 

[Extreme close-up of a mantis holding its prey by the legs and chewing on the body.]

WARE: And they eat it like a corn, little corn on the cob. 

[Ware in the research collections demonstrates how mantises eat by pretending to hold a corn cob and nibbling from one side to another.]

WARE: They’re like this. Which is very cool.

[Ware holds a green mantis in her hands. She and a young researcher talk and look at the insect in a lab setting.]

WARE: One person very familiar with this motion is graduate student Lohit Garikipati. 

[Close up of a brown mantis sitting in Garikipati’s palm.]

LOHIT GARIKIPATI (Graduate Student, Towson University): I’ve probably watched thousands and thousands of strikes of them eating over and over and it’s just so exciting to watch them. 

[Garikipati speaks to Ware in a bright, white research lab.]

[On-screen text: Lohit Garikipati | Graduate Student, Towson University]

GARIKIPATI: And it’s pretty incredible because they’re really just using two legs without any venom or any other assistance to really hold down a prey item. 

[A green mantis holds down a struggling cicada that’s similar to the mantis’ own size.]

GARIKIPATI: And in some cases, that’s bigger than even they are. 

[Garikipati and Ware speak in the lab.]

[On-screen text: Towson University Mantis Lab | Towson, Maryland]

GARIKIPATI: And my research is dealing with how they’re accomplishing that. So, looking at how different species that maybe evolved a similar cryptic strategy, 

[Two shots of stick-like mantises in profile.]

GARIKIPATI: …like two stick-mimicking species, whether or not they’re hunting similarly, 

[A mottled brown, white, and green flower-mimicking mantis perched on a leaf.]

GARIKIPATI: …compared to, say, a flower-mimicking species.

[Ware holds a small dragon-looking mantis in the lab.]

WARE: Here’s the thing about mantises: while they developed incredible forms of camouflage, over millions of years and many different locations, their evolution has converged on a few particularly successful types.

[Series of shots illustrating different camouflage types—mantises that look like bark, leaves, etc.]

WARE: You tend to have species that are bark-mimics, or leaf-mimics, or dead leaf-mimics, or flower-mimics or stick-mimics or grass-mimics. Over and over and over, mantises have converged to look like the same kinds of things.  

[Close-up of a brown, dead-leaf-like mantis in profile.]

[On-screen text: Phyllocrania paradoxa | ghost mantis]

WARE: This species, Phyllocrania paradoxa, is from Africa. 

[Split screen displays Phyllocrania paradoxa on the right, and a very similar, brown, dead-leaf-mimicking mantis species on the left.]

[On-screen text: Deroplatys truncata | dead leaf mantis]

WARE: And this one, Deroplatys truncata, is from halfway around the world in Southeast Asia. 

[Garikipati points out the similar looking dead-leaf mantises in a drawer filled with pinned research specimens.]

GARIKIPATI: These two are in different genera. 

[A split screen shows Phyllocrania paradoxa on the right and a pinkish-white orchid-mimic mantis on the left.]

GARIKIPATI: Believe it or not, this species, Phyllocrania paradoxa, is more closely related to orchid mantises… 

[Garikipati points out the second species of dead-leaf-mimicking mantis.]

GARIKIPATI: …than it is to this Deroplatys truncata, dead leaf mantis. And this Deroplatys is actually more closely related to this stick-mimicking species.

[Garikipati indicates a specimen pinned close by that looks like a stick.]

[Extreme close-ups of pinned mantis specimens. Phyllocrania paradoxa has a label indicating it comes from Natal, Africa. Deroplatys truncata’s label says “Kuching, Borneo.”]

WARE: So these two mantises come from totally different parts of the world, and have totally different evolutionary histories, but they’re like doppelgängers of disguise. 

[Split screen showing two pinned research specimens of mantises. Their leaf-like bodies and wings, and lobed limbs look very similar.]

[On-screen text (left): Deroplatys truncata (SE Asia)]

[On-screen text (right): Phyllocrania paradoxa (Africa)]

[Garikipati points out pinned specimens in the drawer.]

GARIKIPATI: Both have these wide thoraxes and they have that brown mottled coloration and leg lobes. So, we could probably agree that they’re dead leaf-mimicking species.

[Split screen shows two different stick-mimicking mantis species.]

[On-screen text: ecomorph]

WARE: We call that an “ecomorph”—a morphology or body plan that’s shared by individuals in the same ecological niche space. 

[Split screen shows two different species of mantises—both with green and white striped forelimbs.]

WARE: It doesn’t matter if they’re close relatives or not. 

[Ware and Garikipati look at research specimens and talk in the lab.]

WARE: And that can be a headache for scientists trying to untangle the mantis family tree…

GARIKIPATI: Historically, this caused a lot of confusion for researchers because before the advent of widely used genomic data, people understandably would think that if it’s mimicking a dead leaf, they must be related.

[Extreme close-up of mantis with weird, elongated body features and long, feathery antennae.]

GARIKIPATI: Which, in some sense it makes sense because these are complex structures that take a while to evolve. 

[Shots of various mantises that also feature strange, elongated and lobed body structures.]

GARIKIPATI: But in light of recent studies that are showing that they’re actually distantly related, it becomes that much more interesting. 

[Garikipati speaks in the lab.]

GARIKIPATI: Because now the question is, okay, we have two organisms that evolved in different parts of the world… 

[Shots of three different mantis species that all look like blades of dried grass.]

GARIKIPATI: …from different lineages, but they repeatedly have developed these very similar cryptic structures. 

[Handheld camera follows a mantis’ progress as it crawls through tall grasses.]

GARIKIPATI: And I think that can tell us a lot about how they’re interacting with their ecosystem, how prey is trying to avoid them, 

[Close-up of bark-mimicking mantis looking into the camera and moving its mouthparts.]

GARIKIPATI: …and how this cryptic strategy is actually able to help them survive.

[Close-up of Lohit displaying a pinned mantis with long forelimbs and boldly-striped wings.]

WARE: Studying mantises is nothing new for Lohit.

[Garikipati speaks to Ware in the lab.]

GARIKIPATI: I’ve been interested in praying mantises for a very long time. I’ve been raising them-

WARE: Like since childhood?

[A series of photos of Garikipati as a little boy. He is very cool looking, wearing sunglasses and looking for insects.]

GARIKIPATI: Yeah. Since childhood. And over the course of keeping different species over multiple years, 

[Garikipati speaks to Ware in the lab.]

GARIKIPATI: …I got to sort of recognize that there are differences in how they’re going about approaching the prey or when they want to actually strike at the prey, based on the prey’s size or movement. And that sort of got me thinking from a research perspective—well, does that mean they’re actually using those raptorial forelegs differently to get that prey?

[Ware and Garikipati hold and examine a living mantis.]

WARE: Observing animals in life often provokes new questions for researchers. 

[Close-up of Ware looking at a stick-like mantis with an elongated body plan. The mantis is perched high with her body at a 45-degree angle.]

WARE: The position of her body is kind of fascinating.

[Ware speaks to camera in the Museum research collections.]

[On-screen text: ethogram]

WARE: An ethogram is the study of behavior. Like, the traditional ethology or ethograms that were done was just, like, a human being, a pair of eyeballs, a pencil, and paper. Right? And you kind of would watch an organism for 15 minutes or for 30 minutes, kind of document the behaviors that you observed.

[Garikipati and another man, Dr. Christopher Oufiero, set up camera and lighting equipment in a small lab.]

WARE: But now, we have the ability to have cameras positioned in all different locations in a lab setting to record things like force and strike distance for praying mantis forelegs.

[Ware speaks to Garikipati and Oufiero in front of the lab camera set-up.]

WARE: Lohit and his advisor, Dr. Christopher Oufiero, use a high-speed, infrared camera set-up to get a better look at how mantises are making their strikes. 

[A mantis crawls from Garikipati’s hand to perch upside down on a translucent platform. A black curtain backdrop sits below and behind the mantis, and it’s surrounded by lights and cameras.]

WARE: They’ll position a mantis on this platform and tempt her with a nice, juicy cockroach.

[Cockroaches scuttle in a plastic container. A close up of the perched mantis.]

WARE: So, why do you want her to be upside down?

GARIKIPATI: So, normally, mantises are hunting upside down in the wild. 

[Shots of various mantises in the wild perched upside down, hanging below flower petals and leaves.]

GARIKIPATI: They're usually perching underneath something, whether it's a stick or a leaf. 

[Garikipati speaks in the lab.]

GARIKIPATI: And so we just figured we’d try to give them as natural of a setup as we can in the lab.

[Garikipati holds a cockroach with tweezers, wiggling it in front of the mantis perched on the platform.]

GARIKIPATI: So she's thinking about it. You can see she's, like, inching in…  and grabbed.

[The mantis grabs the roach and starts eating it.]

GARIKIPATI: We’re filming at a thousand frames per second to capture that strike because it’s so fast—

[In slow motion, a stick-like mantis strikes at a smaller insect. Its jointed forelimbs flick out and pull the prey towards its body.]

[On-screen text: 33x slower than real life]

GARIKIPATI: …almost as fast as one third of the blink of an eye in some cases, or even faster for some of the species. 

[Garikipati speaks to Ware in the lab.]

GARIKIPATI: So, we really need that high frame rate to capture the motion.

[Black and white research footage shows a split screen—top and side views of a mantis are synced as it strikes its prey in slow motion.]

WARE: Mantis strikes are captured by two cameras—one on the top and one on the side—to give a three dimensional view.

[Garikipati speaks to Ware in the lab.]

GARIKIPATI: Historically, the research on mantises was done using 2D views, but that top view really allowed us to notice a lot of variation in the strike as they’re throwing those raptorial forelegs out. 

[Split screen research footage shows several different mantis species striking at prey.]

GARIKIPATI: Which was all missed before.

WARE: After doing this hundreds, if not thousands, of times, Lohit’s determined that while all mantises use their raptorial forelegs for hunting, 

[Close-ups of Ware and Garikipati holding varied species of mantises.]

WARE: …it turns out there are definitely some nuances in style. 

[Garikipati holds a long-necked brown, stick-like mantis species while Ware looks on.]

[On-screen text: Euchomenella heteroptera | giraffe mantis]

GARIKIPATI: The Euchomenella, they’ll really just watch the prey for a good while and then they’ll go for a strike. But some species just fire off a couple really fast.

WARE: Wayne Gretzky said you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. That’s what he said.

[Garikipati displays a small mantis in the lab.]

WARE: Lohit’s ongoing research is trying to understand whether there may be similarities between ecomorphs… 

[Shots of different mantis species in different environments and with very different body plans: a large-eyed gray and brown-mottled mantis sits in the desert, a horned, stick-like mantis perches on a branch in a green forest, a small, spiny green and black mantis perches on pink flowers, a white orchid mantis eats a fly, a green-and-white striped mantis perches on grass.]

WARE: …that could tell us more about how environments shape the animals living in them. Is it that similar niche spaces always inspire similar hunting strategies? Or, could you have multiple hunting strategies within a particular ecomorph? 

[In a rainforest, Garikipati displays a tiny, ant-like mantis crawling on his finger.]

WARE: What you need to do is actually observe…

[Ware displays various pinned mantis specimens in the Museum’s entomology research collection.]

WARE: Research collections are incredibly important for scientists, but even when we combine that information with genomic work, there’s still a big missing piece of the biological puzzle.

[Ware speaks to camera in the research collection.]

WARE:If you’re just, you know, taking legs off to grind them up for DNA, you’re not going to discover depth perception. 

[Close-up of the underside of a mantis as it crawls on glass.]

WARE: You’re not going to discover that some species have a weird cyclopean ear that may help them avoid bats…

[An animated line points to a spot in between the mantis’ second and third pairs of legs.]

[On-screen text: It’s here]

WARE: ...or that some species practice maternal care. 

[A still photograph shows a bright green and yellow leaf-like mantis on the underside of a leaf, sitting next to four crenelated egg cases. Animated lines indicate the egg cases and the adult female mantis.]

[On-screen text: ootheca | mantis egg case]

[On-screen text: Neomantis australis | netwinged mantis (mom)

WARE: To do that, you really need to be carefully looking at their anatomy… 

[Garikipati expertly waves an insect net through tall grass in a field. He and other researchers examine an insect netted in the field.]

WARE: …and you have to do behavioral work. 

[Ware speaks to camera in the entomology research collection.]

WARE: There’s a lot of people who I think are using really creative approaches to study behavior right now, and it’s kind of an exciting time to be an ethologist.

[Extreme close-up of a green mantis’ alien-looking triangular face and its bulbous, protruding eyes. It turns its neck to look at the camera.

WARE: Mantises are some of the most unearthly-looking animals on Earth, but they’re uniquely adapted to life on this planet. 

[Slow motion footage of a mantis leaping into the air and spreading its wings to fly.]

WARE: New technology is helping us analyze their amazing behaviors in the lab, 

[Close-up of a mantis moving its spiked forelimbs around.]

WARE: …but there are plenty of things to discover even without access to fancy tools.  

[A brown mantis hangs upside down on an evergreen branch, blending in with its browning needles.]

GARIKIPATI: I think a lot of the challenge with mantises is because they’re very good at hiding, there’s definitely more diversity out there. 

[Garikipati and Ware walk through a forested park. Garikipati looks up into tree branches.]

GARIKIPATI: So, if people start exploring their own backyards more, who knows what they’ll end up finding. 

[A mantis is silhouetted on a branch against the setting sun.]

GARIKIPATI: Definitely keep an eye out…  

[CREDITS ROLL]

[Close-up of a mantis cleaning its antenna with an expression that looks like it’s giving side eye to the camera.]

WARE: So, just to address the elephant in the room, yes, some (but not all) mantises engage in sexual cannibalism. 

[A female mantis holds the headless carcass of a male. She nibbles away at what remains.]

WARE: Female mantises get a bad rap, right. 

[Ware speaks to camera in the research collection. She displays a box with a pinned mantis specimen.]

WARE: People are always talking about cannibalism because they often tend to need a meal when they’re doing their reproductive stage. But that’s because this… 

[Ware indicates a tan, spongy spheroid form pinned below the mantis. It’s a little over an inch (2.54 cm) wide, and sizable compared to the adult mantis pinned above it.]

WARE: …has to come out of her! This is a mantis egg case, called an ootheca, and it’s really energetically expensive to make this structure. 

[A female mantis lays her foam-like ootheca on the hood of a car. Another female perches upside down on a branch next to her ootheca. It’s about a third of her body size.]

WARE: It can weigh as much as 30-50% of a mantis’ body!

[Ware speaks to camera in the research collection.]

WARE: So their strategy is to eat the closest meal that they can get, which is their mate. 

[A female mantis strikes at and starts eating a male.]

WARE: Like, she’s making life, okay? Let her eat as many things as she can. 

[Two mantises look at each other across a branch. One makes slow, swaying movements.]

WARE: For other species, it might be a different story when it comes to mating behavior. While courtship displays haven’t been well documented in scientific literature, 

[A bark-mimicking mantis moves along a stick, flashing brightly colored red, orange, and black, paddle-like forelimbs that definitely do not camouflage against a brown backdrop. It approaches an observant female.]

WARE: …the males of some flamboyant species have been seen performing something like mating dances—with movements from flaring their wings and flashing their forelegs to display bright colors… 

[A male mantis twitches and flexes its abdomen and spreads tiny wings as a female looks on.]

WARE: …to flaunting their abdomens. Probably sexier than decapitation!

[A stick-like female mantis eats the head of a male.]