BROADCASTS.com

b'Thanks to Elijah and an anonymous listener for suggesting that we talk about some more species of praying mantis!
\\n
\\nFurther reading:
\\nThe luring mantid: Protrusible pheromone glands in Stenophylla lobivertex (Mantodea: Acanthopidae)
\\nDragons and unicorns (mantises) spotted in Atlantic forest
\\n
\\nCitizen scientists help discover new mantis species
\\n
\\nThe dragon mantis [photo from first article linked above]:
\\n
\\n
\\n
\\nThe possibly new species of unicorn mantis [picture from second article linked above]:
\\n
\\n
\\n
\\nInimia nat, or I. nat, discovered after a citizen scientist posted its photo to iNat [photo from third article linked above]:
\\n
\\n
\\n
\\nShow transcript:
\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw.
\\nThis week we\\u2019re going to revisit a popular topic that we\\u2019ve covered before, especially in episode 187, but which has been suggested by a couple of listeners who want to know more. It\\u2019s the praying mantis. Thanks to Elijah and an anonymous listener who suggested it. Elijah even keeps mantises as pets and sent me some pictures of them, which was awesome.
\\nThe praying mantis gets its name because it holds its spiny front legs forward and together, which sort of resembles someone holding their hands together while praying. That\\u2019s the type of praying spelled p r a y ing, not p r e y ing, which refers to killing and eating other organisms, but the praying mantis does that too. It\\u2019s a predator that will eat anything it can catch, including birds, fish, mice, lizards, frogs, and of course lots of insects.
\\nThere are thousands of mantises, also called mantids, with most species preferring tropical and subtropical climates. In general, a mantis has a triangular head with large eyes, an elongated body, and enlarged front legs that it uses to catch prey. Most species have wings and can fly, some don\\u2019t. Most are ambush predators.
\\nWe talked about several species of mantis in episode 187, and some more in episode 201. You can go back to those episodes to find out general information about mantises, such as how their eyes work and whether they have ears and whether they actually eat their mates (they do, sometimes). This week we\\u2019re going to focus on some findings about mantises that are new since those episodes came out.
\\nThe dragon mantis, Stenophylla lobivertex, was only discovered in the year 2000. Its body is covered with gray-green or green-brown lobes that help it blend in with the leaves in its forest home, but that also kind of make it look like a tiny dragon covered with scaly armor. Even its eyes are spiky. It lives in the tropics of South and Central America where it\\u2019s quite rare, and it usually only grows about an inch and a half long, or 4 cm. It spends most of the time in treetops, where it hunts insects, spiders, and other small animals.
\\nUnlike many mantis species, the dragon mantis is mostly nocturnal. That\\u2019s one of the reasons why we don\\u2019t know a lot about it. In late 2017 through mid-2018, one member of a team of scientists studying animals in Peru noticed something weird in a captive female dragon mantis. Frank Glaw isn\\u2019t an expert in insects but in reptiles and amphibians, but he happened to observe what looked like two tiny maggots emerge from the mantis\\u2019s back, roughly above her last pair of legs, but then disappear again into her back. He thought he was seeing the results of parasitism, but a mantis expert suspected it was something very different.
\\nSome praying mantis females release pheromones from a gland in about the same place on the back.'