PRAYING MANTIDS — GURNET 347 



be SO strongly attracted, prior to the sexual union, that nearby dis- 

 turbances are largely disregarded. 



One October afternoon I went searching for insects to feed a 

 captive Chinese mantid female. Grasshoppers were scarce and only a 

 few small insects were found, in addition to a male of the narrow- 

 winged mantis and one of the Chinese species, which I placed in the 

 cage. l^Tien I reached home 20 minutes later, the female had seized 

 the narrow-winged male and was eating his head. He was consumed 

 in about half an hour, the legs, wings, and end of the abdomen being 

 discarded. She then cleaned her front legs with her mouth and 

 began leisurely to move about the cage. I sa"w her move toward the 

 male of her own species and began to think he was destined to be 

 eaten at once, but she turned away from him when she was about 

 2 inches distant and slightly below him on an adjacent vertical wall 

 of the cage. He had been eyeing the female intently, and just as she 

 turned away he leaped with partly open wings upon her. Soon 

 he had hooked his front feet securely beneath the bases of her closed 

 wings, and the ends of the two abdomens had effected a union. After 

 the first flurry of activity both mantids were quiet, though the fe- 

 male, carrying the male, moved about the cage. They separated 

 31/^ hours later, which was after dark, without the male being attacked. 

 Soon after dawn the next morning, however, the female had seized 

 her mate around the thorax with the left front leg, and while his 

 head was held to one side with the right leg she began her meal by 

 eating through the base of the pronotum. 



In the unnatural confinement of a small cage the eating of males 

 following mating may be more frequent than under normal field 

 conditions. Mantids often mate several times, though one mating 

 appears sufficient to insure fertile eggs. Females that are kept iso- 

 lated will often deposit egg masses that appear perfectly normal, 

 though there has been no mating, but invariably (with the exception 

 of a few species that have no males) they do not hatch. A small 

 percentage of the e^g masses of the Chinese and narrow- winged man- 

 tids that I have collected and confined for rearing have not hatched. 

 Whether some of this failure to hatch is due to lack of fertilization 

 is not known. 



Unlike many crickets, katydids, and grasshoppers, "voices" play 

 no part in the "courtship" of mantids. The several forms of stridula- 

 tion exhibited by those Orthoptera, ranging from the delicately ex- 

 quisite tinkling of our small bush crickets {Anaxipha and Cyrtoxipha) 

 to the raucous rasping of the true katydids {PterophyUa) ^ which may 

 be heard for half a mile on a favorable evening late in summer, are 

 among the best known of all the sounds of insects. Like nearly 

 all. the roaches, mantids have on their wings, legs, or other, organs 

 no stridulatory equipment for expressing their disposition in "song." 



