{"id":358,"date":"2010-09-21T12:52:00","date_gmt":"2010-09-21T17:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2010\/09\/21\/mantid_cannibalism_fairly_rare_except_when_its_not\/"},"modified":"2022-03-18T13:25:48","modified_gmt":"2022-03-18T18:25:48","slug":"mantid_cannibalism_fairly_rare_except_when_its_not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2010\/09\/21\/mantid_cannibalism_fairly_rare_except_when_its_not\/","title":{"rendered":"Mantid cannibalism &#8220;fairly rare,&#8221; except when it&#8217;s not"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve all heard stories about the tendency of the female praying mantis to bite the head off the male after mating, right? Well, that&#8217;s a gross exaggeration, and unfair to the species. In point of fact, the female bites off the head <i>before<\/i> mating, which, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.straightdope.com\/columns\/read\/368\/does-mrs-mantis-bite-mr-mantiss-head-off-during-the-act\">according to this article<\/a>, spurs the guy on.<\/p>\n<p>Hard to believe, huh? Yeah, that&#8217;s what I thought until I spotted an oddly constructed insect on our crape myrtle at lunch today. Click on the small photos to see the gory details.<\/p>\n<div style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/mantismating1.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-0\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #cccccc;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/mantismating1-t.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of mating mantids\" hspace=\"3\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/mantismating2.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-1\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #cccccc;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/mantismating2-t.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of mating mantids\" hspace=\"3\"><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/mantismating3.jpg\" data-rel=\"lightbox-image-2\" data-rl_title=\"\" data-rl_caption=\"\" title=\"\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"border: 1px solid #cccccc;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/images\/miscphotos\/mantismating3-t.jpg\" alt=\"Photo of mating mantids\" hspace=\"3\"><\/a><\/div>\n<p>I&#8217;m sure there&#8217;s a cautionary tale here, somewhere, but I&#8217;m trying really hard not to think about it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We&#8217;ve all heard stories about the tendency of the female praying mantis to bite the head off the male after mating, right? Well, that&#8217;s a gross exaggeration, and unfair to the species. In point of fact, the female bites off the head before mating, which, according to this article, spurs the guy on. Hard to&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2010\/09\/21\/mantid_cannibalism_fairly_rare_except_when_its_not\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Mantid cannibalism &#8220;fairly rare,&#8221; except when it&#8217;s not<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-358","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photography","category-wildlife-inverts","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9058,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358\/revisions\/9058"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}