MAX MANTIS 

This is the soon to be Max Mantis page... all I have right now are some neato pictures I took of Max devouring some little beasties... Coming soon will be Max's story as told by myself... and some links to all things mantid... Yeah...  Enjoy the photos...

Chad

Dining with a Preying Mantis A Primer:

First of all, these are my personal observations after watching Max, my beloved mantis, eat a few meals in my presence...  In this first picture notice how Max is holding the mayfly by the wings, with the wings stretched out... this does two things:  First, it gives the mantis a good grip on it's prey, and secondly, it provides for a spectacularly gruesome death when you get to see the mantis eat it's prey HEAD FIRST WHILE IT IS STILL ALIVE!!!


This second photo shows Max making his way through the body, of course by this time the head is gone, the critter is dead...







What we have left, is the dry and not so tasty portion of the bug, as you can see here,  Max has decided to carelessly discard these wing segments without further consideration to the starving masses of mantids over in third world countries...

As a final note, my study of Max Mantis contiues... but this much I have learned, Max does not like lightning bugs... how do I know this?  Well, Max started to feast on one, and after gnawing into it, he started spitting up everything he had eaten to that point...  I tried to snap off a few neato photos of the lightning bug "lighting up", but the subject proved to be unaccomodating and the photo opportunity was missed.

Stay tuned for more info from the land of Max Mantis...

As with humans, it's considered rude to photograph a mantis while it eats...

See the black speck in his eye?  Yes, he IS watching you... (eek!)

Three of these four wing segments ended up scattered on top of the authors keyboard...