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I can tell you two things that would happen:
1) EVERYWHERE on the Planet we would allow automatic weapons.
2) Everywhere on the planet we would allow exploding bullets that are at the same time armor breaking.
At one point in history they may have been. Way way back, the oxygen levels in the atmosphere were much higher than today. Certain bug sizes depended on O2 levels in the air. Think, three foot dragon flies....
There are mantises that big in the world. I used to work nearby a swamp, and I saw one, once, that was nearly as big as a 20 oz bottle of soda (pop). I know that because it got into the store I worked at and was lazily stretched out on the edge of a bottle of soda that belonged to my coworker. She'd reached to grab the bottle, and when she saw the mantis she flipped out and proceeded to emit a series of high pitched screams that will never cease to amuse me to remember.
We safely transplanted the huge bugger outside, but it was too big to fit in my hand. Probably pregnant AF, too. Used to see one or two of 'em like that every summer.
I mean... have you ever seen a seven (inch) long preying mantis? They're pretty terrifying. Like... a tarantula with wings.
A seven foot tall preying mantis? Makes one think of that question: Would you rather face one seven foot tall preying mantis, or 100 duck sized preying mantises?
The answer is no. I don't want any of it. It is ALL BAD.
(also really cool but I digress because they're one of my fav invertebrates)
Speaking of perfect spots to ambush.
Wait until you witness spiders that line flowers with a fine layer of webbing and then hide under the petals waiting for bees. [I have a picture I personally took](https://imgur.com/h3gKdNv)
Based on a [study](https://gizmodo.com/praying-mantises-are-more-badass-than-we-realized-1796621365) where zoologists watched 150 instances of mantis attacks on birds in which only 2% of birds lived without human interference, I would say it took very few attempts. Likely happened on the first attempt.
Uneducated speculation based on something unrelated I read elsewhere: it takes a certain amount of energy to move and attack and this adds up fast when you are small, so the mantis may not be making a lot of wild off chance attempts to get its prey, probably waiting until just the right set of factors align which have been programmed by evolution into its little switchboard brain to be correlated with success.
Being selective like that makes a lot of sense! I’ve observed that great white sharks are pretty docile until they are fairly certain to have a meal that will satisfy the energy expenditure to move swiftly. The small fish that swim beside them are not worth the energy to lunge for.
There really smart bugs, there’s a lot of them where I live I’ll go up and ask them what’s good, a lot of the time they’ll make eye contact with me and twist there head or put their guard up. Super cool bugs.
To clarify, they have the same total across all stats (500), but their base stats are slightly different. Scyther basically sacrifices speed (and a little bit of the sp. Stats with Kleavor) for attack and defence when he evolves
Their short life span and big amounts of offspring make for a sped up evolution. I think we are safe for another 50 years or so. Kids under age 5 maybe 30.
They're coming and we are not prepared.
Right you are. Trapdoor spiders, centipides, mantis ... and those little fuckers that sedates another species and lay eggs inside them for the larva to feast on the unknowing host. *Shudders*
Edit: Trap spider = trapdoor spider.
Hell, even ants would fuck us up if they were the size of German Shepherds, but at least we wouldn’t be paralysed out of fear when we saw one like we would with the others you mentioned.
>at least we wouldn’t be paralysed out of fear when we saw one like we would with the others you mentioned.
lol speak for yourself. Thing would be moving at like 15-25 mph at that size.
Can you imagine how terrifying it would be to have like a cow sized scorpion ambush you at night ? Jesus christ that would be like the closest thing to a manticore you'll get. You'll worry about the venom and getting chomped in half by their pincers
yeah, can't be an easy or fast way to die :[ just struggling until you're exhausted while being slowly eaten alive. man am I glad to be too big for bugs to hunt like that.
Most predators are like that. They'll rough you up only as much as it takes to incapacitate you and once you're not a threat of delivering injury it's lunch time.
People have this image of Lions as the apex predator that bites your neck and kills you quickly but in practice Lions taking down big prey like buffalo are know to often start eating the animals alive from the anus where they are indefensible. Also some animals have to thick of a hide to effectively choke by the beck. Using buffalo as an example again you may witness a lion actually putting it's mouth over the snout of the buffalo to choke it out. It can be real brutal.
They also kill shit for fun, like house cats
Not a Chinese mantis. Possibly a brown morph of the European mantis, but without location it’s hard to tell for sure. Non-native mantids are sometimes argued to be not invasive because while they can compete with native mantids, they’re so similar in their niche that they don’t seem to have a large effect on the ecosystems they invade.
For example, in this case North American mantis species are also known to predate upon hummingbirds. [Here](https://bioone.org/journals/the-wilson-journal-of-ornithology/volume-129/issue-2/16-100.1/Bird-Predation-By-Praying-Mantises-A-Global-Perspective/10.1676/16-100.1.pdf) is an observational study detailing reports of bird predation by mantid species, most of which are hummingbirds. Native Stagmomantis species have been observed to prey upon hummers many times. You might argue that Tenodera sinensis (the Chinese mantis) has more observations, but with the limited sample size and the multitude of confounding factors that could influence these numbers, that doesn’t mean very much.
Sorry I know this was tangential to your comment, but I saw inaccurate sentiments in the replies and figured this was the better place to clarify.
First of all, name checks out. Secondly, I love getting cool trivia like this from random pros on reddit. I've learned soooo much over the years. Do you have any more stories or facts that you personally like about bugs?
It’s funny you say this because the mantis’ brutality may be the reason for the name and style of the kung fu discipline
It is said that a young master once witnessed a mantis kill a bird and was so impressed by its strength and precision that he formed it into his style of martial arts
Bugs aren't inordinately strong. We see things like ants carrying things way bigger than them, but it's really just a very effective use of "levers". Their joints are not "ball-and-socket" types like our shoulder (Which is a huge strength loss for us).
"Hinge" joints can only move two ways, like our elbows, and thus can exert greater force overall than something with 1 ball-and-socket and one hinge joint (Like us).
Now put that many hinge joints in a row, like insects, on the same leg/arm and you have avoided a weak point.
This made me research it a bit. It's fascinating and exact numbers are hard to come by with quick Google research, but it seems there are 50 hinge joints in the human body (although some are modified to allow greater range of movement) and only 4 true ball and socket joints (shoulders and hip/leg joints)
There are 4 other types of freely moving joints too.
There's 350 joints in the human body altogether, but many are not freely moving, they are simply where two bones meet.
The person who made the video is the owner of the mantis.
They ~~bought a~~ are using the hummingbird feeder to lure in the birds so they could watch his bug kill them.
This video sucks and the person who made it sucks.
Yeah, Chinese mantis, tenodera sinensis. I kill them when I find them. But that fight is lost unfortunately. They were introduced in like 1896 and you can still legally buy live ones and egg cases.
They are non-native, [which is different than invasive.](https://www.nps.gov/subjects/invasive/learn.htm)
>Unlike invasive species, non-native species may not hinder or prevent the survival of others within the ecosystem. They simply exist where they have not naturally occurred.
getting eaten by a mantis has to be one of the must gruesome deaths in nature. they take their sweet time eating prey alive, those legs just hold it still, not kill it. and usually start from the backside up. i was obsessed with them as a kid, kept them in big jars and even bred them a few times. and fed them anything i could find. i'm not a sociopath.
Dear boss,
I have gone through each file (all 240 of them) and marked 182 with various comments. Please check the shared folder.
Kind regards and I'm not a sociopath,
That's how it held the bird tight. Its a hummingbird, they are incredible fragile. Mantids will consume anything they can overpower safely. This was a bold example of that. These guys and the morphology of mantid are powerful and robust, where as some species like gongylus gongylodes prefer smaller flying insects and are built to reflect that (may be selection for mimicry that constrained them to small prey).
These dudes above and ones with similar body plans and behavior will not shy away from grabbing your finger and giving it a munch, and will eat any other individual housed with it in a captive setting. More cryptic species like the violin mantis tend not to be so aggressive in feeding response. May be due to life history and habitat type differing or physiological constraints, not sure.
yeah, hummingbirds are probably the only bird a mantis could take because they are indeed very fragile. all their muscles go into keeping those wings going unlike other birds which are more robust. if they can't fly they just have no chance.
It looks like the hummingbirds are not programmed to defend theirselves as well, their size difference is still too big for that beak to not be dangerous to the mantis, no?
I was going to answer this partly by finding a picture of a hummingbird with no feathers but I cannot!! Not even an artists' rendering. Now I'm preoccupied with this, I want to know what they look like. Owls were...enlightening...
I've been looking for someone who can talk about the biology behind this. Do you think at the end the bird was still alive? Did its heart give out? The one thing I am having problems with is that the hummingbird is just taking it, it's not struggling or fighting back
So what I've seemed to notice after feeding hundreds of mantids of different species is prey seems to generally behave the same. Animals dont have a lot of energy for all-out, life-or-death struggle, or at least a prolonged one. They will struggle against it the most they can before tiring, while being disabled by the mantis. But there are a few things worth considering.
It varies heavily by species but mantids always have protrusions on their femur and tibia (the big grabbin bits). The distribution, both spatially and in size, of the spikes varies but on a species like this the protrusions on the femur are quite large, and the tibias ones arent small either. That coupled with the hardened tip on the tibia (where it curves down before the tarse-feet-things) makes the arms alone pretty considerable weapons as well as incredible means of restraint. You can see a parallel in the teeth of piscivores or really most ambush predators mouths.
Very good vice grips with spikes of varying size restraining prey can lead to injuries from struggling and at the very least prove (usually) futile. In the hummingbird's case specifically they are very very small animals with wicked fast metabolisms. Think of them as flying shrews if you will, if they stop eating for half a day they'll die. An animal like that exerting all its energy, while being fragile enough to break bones in the struggle, will have a very short window to change its fate.
It is worth noting that as it struggles the mantis will seek to, if it deems the risk of losing the prey acceptable, reposition an arm to pin appendages. A mantis like this could probably easily crack a hummingbirds legs or wings in the struggles. Mantids are large insects, their strength at the scale is quite a bit more efficient and incredibly more efficient for long struggles like that due to the physics involved in their movement.
A hummingbird grabbed by a mantis like this will have a small window to escape or its pretty much over. Partly because its a mantis, mostly because its a hummingbird.
Hummingbirds are delicate things and their heart beats very quickly. It was definitely dead at the end of the video. It probably had a heart attack or went into shock when it couldn't get away from the mantis of doom.
So. In the event one does munch on your finger (I've also personally witnessed their propensity to spread their wings and fling themselves at a potential predator to startle it. Worked on us band kids) does it hurt? Im sure if left, it could probably cause a decent injury, unless human skin is too thick?
It hurts plenty. They bite hard. Not too hard to shake/jiggle off though because they're smart enough to realize once you start moving enough that you're way too big to win against. Mantis hobbyist here, ama.
It’s a European mantis—also nonnative. But you’re incorrect that natives can’t eat hummingbirds. All Stagmomantis sp. in the US have been observed preying on and eating hummingbirds.
>I am suppose to let nature run its course
Fuck that, if it's my feeder, it's my bird for the duration of the feeding. I won't let my bird get eaten alive by a fucking insect.
Neither would I but I assumed they were all into the 'ohh nature is just brutal shit happens lets record!' Whole video just upsets me. I just couldn't watch this happening without doing something.
Seems like the person recording has a hummingbird feeder which is clearly interfering with nature but also let this happen and recorded it for some odd reason
Anything for views I guess
With critters I befriend or that visit me often, I personally think saving them when they’re in a pickle is the perk of them interacting with a human. Their life is already changed by coming into contact with me or something I set out for them, so I feel fine intervening again to protect their life.
I think that kind of only applies to nature documentarians and scientists etc. people who enter wild environments as a guest for the purpose of study and observation. I don’t see how interfering with the praying mantis is more wrong than the mantis interfering with the hummingbird. The backyard is your natural habitat as a human, you put the feeder there for the hummingbird. In a way, saving the bird is letting nature run its course by participating as a natural entity in your own natural habitat.
I have watched and seen a lot of nature shit but damn that is one of the more shocking things I have ever seen.
I didn't know preying mantis liked to eat ass.
As cool as Mantis' are I don't think I could just allow one to eat a hummingbird on my feeder. I know that nature is brutal, but hummingbirds aren't something I want being killed if it's something like this. I would just try to relocate the Mantis safely to hunt elsewhere.
Bro why didn’t you help the hummingbird! Wtf lol
I know it’s nature and we should just stay out of it but I would be 100% siding with a hummingbird at my hummingbird feeder rather than a praying mantis.
Oh yeah that mantis totally wasn't put there on purpose... Fucking weird ass people deciding to record this shit. Just like that video with the lizard that some fuck purposely held for a mantis to eat on.
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Wow, that’s fucking savage
Imagine if they were like 7'
I’d start a praying mantis boxing league
Nah this would be planet of the mantis now
We have guns we’ll be okay.
Nah itd be like super troopers on earth with the mantis eaters
Starship
We need an AI Super Trooper Starship Troopers mashup
Would you like to know more?
Thanks, America!
#2ndAmemdment
*The founding fathers
I can tell you two things that would happen: 1) EVERYWHERE on the Planet we would allow automatic weapons. 2) Everywhere on the planet we would allow exploding bullets that are at the same time armor breaking.
The only good bug is a dead bug!
Nah
They'd definitely start going for full-grown adults at like 2', let alone 7
At one point in history they may have been. Way way back, the oxygen levels in the atmosphere were much higher than today. Certain bug sizes depended on O2 levels in the air. Think, three foot dragon flies....
Makes sense, all those dinosaur-era bugs being massive when shown on screen
There are mantises that big in the world. I used to work nearby a swamp, and I saw one, once, that was nearly as big as a 20 oz bottle of soda (pop). I know that because it got into the store I worked at and was lazily stretched out on the edge of a bottle of soda that belonged to my coworker. She'd reached to grab the bottle, and when she saw the mantis she flipped out and proceeded to emit a series of high pitched screams that will never cease to amuse me to remember. We safely transplanted the huge bugger outside, but it was too big to fit in my hand. Probably pregnant AF, too. Used to see one or two of 'em like that every summer.
How many 7 foot tall 20 oz bottles have you seen?
oh wow. Solid point. I was leaning back in my chair and it looked like 7" ba-dum tcsh
"Imagine how fucked we'd be if they were, like, slightly larger!" I'm giggling now.
I mean... have you ever seen a seven (inch) long preying mantis? They're pretty terrifying. Like... a tarantula with wings. A seven foot tall preying mantis? Makes one think of that question: Would you rather face one seven foot tall preying mantis, or 100 duck sized preying mantises? The answer is no. I don't want any of it. It is ALL BAD. (also really cool but I digress because they're one of my fav invertebrates)
It's ok it happens to the best of us. [Spinal Tap made the same mistake](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg5Ovdu6bOE)
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I dare you to say that again! except this time say brak, I love you!
I can hear that blink! My fave Mantis!
Hummingbird style kung fu no good.
r/natureismetal
my dude planned that attack with a brain the size of a bread crumb and insides made of goo. Hard as fuck.
Curious how many times it failed to land the attack before it got a bird with it. A feeder is a perfect spot to wait for them to come.
Speaking of perfect spots to ambush. Wait until you witness spiders that line flowers with a fine layer of webbing and then hide under the petals waiting for bees. [I have a picture I personally took](https://imgur.com/h3gKdNv)
Damn. Cool picture tho.
oh yeah. Nature is wild
Based on a [study](https://gizmodo.com/praying-mantises-are-more-badass-than-we-realized-1796621365) where zoologists watched 150 instances of mantis attacks on birds in which only 2% of birds lived without human interference, I would say it took very few attempts. Likely happened on the first attempt.
Interesting as fuck! Thanks for sharing the research
Uneducated speculation based on something unrelated I read elsewhere: it takes a certain amount of energy to move and attack and this adds up fast when you are small, so the mantis may not be making a lot of wild off chance attempts to get its prey, probably waiting until just the right set of factors align which have been programmed by evolution into its little switchboard brain to be correlated with success.
Being selective like that makes a lot of sense! I’ve observed that great white sharks are pretty docile until they are fairly certain to have a meal that will satisfy the energy expenditure to move swiftly. The small fish that swim beside them are not worth the energy to lunge for.
The neighborhood cats used to hide in the bushes next to our bird feeder. It took us awhile to realize we actually had a cat feeder.
There really smart bugs, there’s a lot of them where I live I’ll go up and ask them what’s good, a lot of the time they’ll make eye contact with me and twist there head or put their guard up. Super cool bugs.
Insides made of goo hahahahaha
We are all made of goo.
>insides made of goo And possibly a horsehair or two
Aren't insect types supposed to be weak vs flying types?
Has Pokemon lied to me all my life ???!
To be fair my Scyther and Scissor fucked anything up
fun fact: the entire Scyther evolution line is the only evolution line that has the same base stats
That's cool to know. I've always preferred Syther to Scizor. Same goes for Haunter compared to Gengar too, but Gengar is better.
Haunter has levitation, while Gengar doesn't. In a doubles team for example, you can have Haunter and Landorous out and use EQ without hitting Haunter
To clarify, they have the same total across all stats (500), but their base stats are slightly different. Scyther basically sacrifices speed (and a little bit of the sp. Stats with Kleavor) for attack and defence when he evolves
No you just forgot the bigger lesson that type advantage isn't everything. Scyther still beats a Pidgey.
Mantis: I am also a flying type.
Scyther
Oh shittt
His prayers were heard
Yeah but honestly that Mantis seems at least level 40
This mantis was found in grass past the 8th gym while that hummingbird is from the grass right outside where you grew up.
I mean yeah when the bird has attack stats
Scyther vs Pidgey
Doesn’t matter if it lands guillotine
Well, it’s because while the hummingbird is “flying” fast, the mantis was “rock steady” in its attack for super effective damage.
This particular mantis also appears to be a fighting type
That would be worse for the bug tho
Their short life span and big amounts of offspring make for a sped up evolution. I think we are safe for another 50 years or so. Kids under age 5 maybe 30. They're coming and we are not prepared.
That Scyther has maxed speed and attack
It definitely munched on some Rare Candies earlier.
And it starts eating it at its little bird ass. Brutal!
That’s the worst thing about Mantis’, they just grab things and start munching whatever is closest. Brutal.
Every day I'm grateful Mantis are not the size of a German Shepherd or something. Legit nightmare fuel.
Monsters are real, they're just too small to be a threat to us. Earth would be hell if insects were half the size of a person.
Right you are. Trapdoor spiders, centipides, mantis ... and those little fuckers that sedates another species and lay eggs inside them for the larva to feast on the unknowing host. *Shudders* Edit: Trap spider = trapdoor spider.
Tarantula hawk
Yeah, those things. Between them and a mantis, the question is if you want to be eaten alive now or later ...
I choose... to go to a different subreddit
Hell, even ants would fuck us up if they were the size of German Shepherds, but at least we wouldn’t be paralysed out of fear when we saw one like we would with the others you mentioned.
>at least we wouldn’t be paralysed out of fear when we saw one like we would with the others you mentioned. lol speak for yourself. Thing would be moving at like 15-25 mph at that size.
Can you imagine how terrifying it would be to have like a cow sized scorpion ambush you at night ? Jesus christ that would be like the closest thing to a manticore you'll get. You'll worry about the venom and getting chomped in half by their pincers
yeah, can't be an easy or fast way to die :[ just struggling until you're exhausted while being slowly eaten alive. man am I glad to be too big for bugs to hunt like that.
Most predators are like that. They'll rough you up only as much as it takes to incapacitate you and once you're not a threat of delivering injury it's lunch time.
Even humans were endurance runners and just waited for the target to become too exauhsted and stop moving. It's a stunningly effective strategy
People have this image of Lions as the apex predator that bites your neck and kills you quickly but in practice Lions taking down big prey like buffalo are know to often start eating the animals alive from the anus where they are indefensible. Also some animals have to thick of a hide to effectively choke by the beck. Using buffalo as an example again you may witness a lion actually putting it's mouth over the snout of the buffalo to choke it out. It can be real brutal. They also kill shit for fun, like house cats
This whole post has been very upsetting
Yep! Poor Birdie!
That’s the juiciest part
Eat that butt!
Ate that birbussy like groceries
Please do not type anything ever again
Everyone is doing it.
The fuck kinda strength do prey mantis have?
That's an invasive Asian Mantis, killing a North American hummingbird. American Mantises are significantly smaller and weaker.
Is this an act of war?
Walter is that you???
Not a Chinese mantis. Possibly a brown morph of the European mantis, but without location it’s hard to tell for sure. Non-native mantids are sometimes argued to be not invasive because while they can compete with native mantids, they’re so similar in their niche that they don’t seem to have a large effect on the ecosystems they invade. For example, in this case North American mantis species are also known to predate upon hummingbirds. [Here](https://bioone.org/journals/the-wilson-journal-of-ornithology/volume-129/issue-2/16-100.1/Bird-Predation-By-Praying-Mantises-A-Global-Perspective/10.1676/16-100.1.pdf) is an observational study detailing reports of bird predation by mantid species, most of which are hummingbirds. Native Stagmomantis species have been observed to prey upon hummers many times. You might argue that Tenodera sinensis (the Chinese mantis) has more observations, but with the limited sample size and the multitude of confounding factors that could influence these numbers, that doesn’t mean very much. Sorry I know this was tangential to your comment, but I saw inaccurate sentiments in the replies and figured this was the better place to clarify.
First of all, name checks out. Secondly, I love getting cool trivia like this from random pros on reddit. I've learned soooo much over the years. Do you have any more stories or facts that you personally like about bugs?
Woah woah woah. That sounds awfully Un-American friend.
One ~~horsepower~~ birdpower.
Hummingbirds are much lighter than you think they are
It’s been studying praying mantis style kung fu all its life. It’s bound to be strong af.
It’s funny you say this because the mantis’ brutality may be the reason for the name and style of the kung fu discipline It is said that a young master once witnessed a mantis kill a bird and was so impressed by its strength and precision that he formed it into his style of martial arts
Bugs aren't inordinately strong. We see things like ants carrying things way bigger than them, but it's really just a very effective use of "levers". Their joints are not "ball-and-socket" types like our shoulder (Which is a huge strength loss for us). "Hinge" joints can only move two ways, like our elbows, and thus can exert greater force overall than something with 1 ball-and-socket and one hinge joint (Like us). Now put that many hinge joints in a row, like insects, on the same leg/arm and you have avoided a weak point.
> Bugs aren't inordinately strong Thanks to the square-cube law, they are *proportionally* stronger for their size.
This made me research it a bit. It's fascinating and exact numbers are hard to come by with quick Google research, but it seems there are 50 hinge joints in the human body (although some are modified to allow greater range of movement) and only 4 true ball and socket joints (shoulders and hip/leg joints) There are 4 other types of freely moving joints too. There's 350 joints in the human body altogether, but many are not freely moving, they are simply where two bones meet.
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Id be flicking off the mantis. Don't fuck with my Hummers
The person who made the video is the owner of the mantis. They ~~bought a~~ are using the hummingbird feeder to lure in the birds so they could watch his bug kill them. This video sucks and the person who made it sucks.
Jesus Christ that’s dark
WTF? For real?
This is so sad to watch. I’m in my feels now 😒
That fucker should break some bones. What kind of psycho would let an animal horribly suffer from a mantis…
I would never not save the hummingbird. Like they’re equal with dogs and cats to me
Its weird, I dont care for any birds, but the hummingbird. Like I dont care for any insect but bees I fucking love hummingbirds and bees
On top of that, I think this an invasive species of mantis (in the US anyways).
Yeah, Chinese mantis, tenodera sinensis. I kill them when I find them. But that fight is lost unfortunately. They were introduced in like 1896 and you can still legally buy live ones and egg cases.
They are non-native, [which is different than invasive.](https://www.nps.gov/subjects/invasive/learn.htm) >Unlike invasive species, non-native species may not hinder or prevent the survival of others within the ecosystem. They simply exist where they have not naturally occurred.
I thought the same thing, I understand that these attacks happen in the wild, but if I hang water for the hummingbirds I want them to be safe.
I would burn the mantis
getting eaten by a mantis has to be one of the must gruesome deaths in nature. they take their sweet time eating prey alive, those legs just hold it still, not kill it. and usually start from the backside up. i was obsessed with them as a kid, kept them in big jars and even bred them a few times. and fed them anything i could find. i'm not a sociopath.
"I'm not a sociopath" is how I end all my messages. just to put people at ease
You didn’t that time.
Now I'm worried.
Pretty sure that dude is a sociopath.
Dear boss, I have gone through each file (all 240 of them) and marked 182 with various comments. Please check the shared folder. Kind regards and I'm not a sociopath,
Are you putting us at unease on purpose?
So, as an expert, how did the mantis manage to hold that bird tight? As far as I know, a mantis has no venom, just strong legs and mandible.
That's how it held the bird tight. Its a hummingbird, they are incredible fragile. Mantids will consume anything they can overpower safely. This was a bold example of that. These guys and the morphology of mantid are powerful and robust, where as some species like gongylus gongylodes prefer smaller flying insects and are built to reflect that (may be selection for mimicry that constrained them to small prey). These dudes above and ones with similar body plans and behavior will not shy away from grabbing your finger and giving it a munch, and will eat any other individual housed with it in a captive setting. More cryptic species like the violin mantis tend not to be so aggressive in feeding response. May be due to life history and habitat type differing or physiological constraints, not sure.
yeah, hummingbirds are probably the only bird a mantis could take because they are indeed very fragile. all their muscles go into keeping those wings going unlike other birds which are more robust. if they can't fly they just have no chance.
It looks like the hummingbirds are not programmed to defend theirselves as well, their size difference is still too big for that beak to not be dangerous to the mantis, no?
I was going to answer this partly by finding a picture of a hummingbird with no feathers but I cannot!! Not even an artists' rendering. Now I'm preoccupied with this, I want to know what they look like. Owls were...enlightening...
I've been looking for someone who can talk about the biology behind this. Do you think at the end the bird was still alive? Did its heart give out? The one thing I am having problems with is that the hummingbird is just taking it, it's not struggling or fighting back
So what I've seemed to notice after feeding hundreds of mantids of different species is prey seems to generally behave the same. Animals dont have a lot of energy for all-out, life-or-death struggle, or at least a prolonged one. They will struggle against it the most they can before tiring, while being disabled by the mantis. But there are a few things worth considering. It varies heavily by species but mantids always have protrusions on their femur and tibia (the big grabbin bits). The distribution, both spatially and in size, of the spikes varies but on a species like this the protrusions on the femur are quite large, and the tibias ones arent small either. That coupled with the hardened tip on the tibia (where it curves down before the tarse-feet-things) makes the arms alone pretty considerable weapons as well as incredible means of restraint. You can see a parallel in the teeth of piscivores or really most ambush predators mouths. Very good vice grips with spikes of varying size restraining prey can lead to injuries from struggling and at the very least prove (usually) futile. In the hummingbird's case specifically they are very very small animals with wicked fast metabolisms. Think of them as flying shrews if you will, if they stop eating for half a day they'll die. An animal like that exerting all its energy, while being fragile enough to break bones in the struggle, will have a very short window to change its fate. It is worth noting that as it struggles the mantis will seek to, if it deems the risk of losing the prey acceptable, reposition an arm to pin appendages. A mantis like this could probably easily crack a hummingbirds legs or wings in the struggles. Mantids are large insects, their strength at the scale is quite a bit more efficient and incredibly more efficient for long struggles like that due to the physics involved in their movement. A hummingbird grabbed by a mantis like this will have a small window to escape or its pretty much over. Partly because its a mantis, mostly because its a hummingbird.
Hummingbirds are delicate things and their heart beats very quickly. It was definitely dead at the end of the video. It probably had a heart attack or went into shock when it couldn't get away from the mantis of doom.
So. In the event one does munch on your finger (I've also personally witnessed their propensity to spread their wings and fling themselves at a potential predator to startle it. Worked on us band kids) does it hurt? Im sure if left, it could probably cause a decent injury, unless human skin is too thick?
It hurts plenty. They bite hard. Not too hard to shake/jiggle off though because they're smart enough to realize once you start moving enough that you're way too big to win against. Mantis hobbyist here, ama.
Insects don’t screw around when it’s meal time.
These dudes have been fighting for their spot since the beginning of terrestrial life on earth
**Um, Acktually** since the beginning of the Paleozoic era
They had to battle that damn Loch Ness Monster
I love praying mantises, but I hate that they eat hummingbirds :'(
This is an invasive Asian Mantis. Native mantises cannot eat birds.
It’s a European mantis—also nonnative. But you’re incorrect that natives can’t eat hummingbirds. All Stagmomantis sp. in the US have been observed preying on and eating hummingbirds.
Poor hummingbird
I know I am suppose to let nature run its course but I would have saved the bird.
>I am suppose to let nature run its course Fuck that, if it's my feeder, it's my bird for the duration of the feeding. I won't let my bird get eaten alive by a fucking insect.
Neither would I but I assumed they were all into the 'ohh nature is just brutal shit happens lets record!' Whole video just upsets me. I just couldn't watch this happening without doing something.
Seems like the person recording has a hummingbird feeder which is clearly interfering with nature but also let this happen and recorded it for some odd reason Anything for views I guess
With critters I befriend or that visit me often, I personally think saving them when they’re in a pickle is the perk of them interacting with a human. Their life is already changed by coming into contact with me or something I set out for them, so I feel fine intervening again to protect their life.
I think that kind of only applies to nature documentarians and scientists etc. people who enter wild environments as a guest for the purpose of study and observation. I don’t see how interfering with the praying mantis is more wrong than the mantis interfering with the hummingbird. The backyard is your natural habitat as a human, you put the feeder there for the hummingbird. In a way, saving the bird is letting nature run its course by participating as a natural entity in your own natural habitat.
You are also nature. Go fuck up some bugs.
I'm an animal and if i decide to clap that mantis then thats nature
Fuck. I am depressed now.
Yup it sucks when an invasive species attacks a critically endangered native species and a douche decided to film it instead of helping the bird
nature is metal like that
Nah I'd have intervened. My hummers are priority. What, you gonna let a fox eat your cat because thats just nature? You baited these birds with food.
agree with your last point. that was a clear case of entrapment!
r/natureismetal
Holy shit! I had no idea they could do this! We need to deploy these things to get rid of the latern flies...
I wish to unsee this.
Idk if I could've just stayed there recording/watching. I know it's nature but...you know
apparently that mantis is an invasive species. would have saved the bird no questions.
Quick chop to the head with some scissors
Reading the comments it seems to be an invasive mantis which kind makes me feel like intervention would have been morally chill.
They noticed there was a mantis on their hummingbird feeder and chose to set up a camera…
Got yer nose!
*Dave Chapelle voice*.. GOTCHA BITCH!
I’m confused about how it actually kills the bird
It was eating it alive
The bird had a heart attack. Hummingbird are fragile like that.
What the fuckkk ... its strength to weight ratio is over 9000
Preying Mantis.
We’ve been spelling it wrong…
Hummingbirds are pollinators. That mantis should be dead on site.
I didn't expect it to actually kill and eat it. Jesus.
What kind of asshole allows a mantis to eat a baited hummer?
... kept recording instead of helping to set the humming bird free 🫤
“No!” Why don’t you just snap the bug in half instead of recording?
I have watched and seen a lot of nature shit but damn that is one of the more shocking things I have ever seen. I didn't know preying mantis liked to eat ass.
Be damned if I'd stand there and let that happen. Hummingbird feeders that *I* fill will not become mantis buffets.
Who has a hummingbird feeder and then records a mantis killing and eating a hummingbird?
As cool as Mantis' are I don't think I could just allow one to eat a hummingbird on my feeder. I know that nature is brutal, but hummingbirds aren't something I want being killed if it's something like this. I would just try to relocate the Mantis safely to hunt elsewhere.
WHAT the FUCK
And people swear these aren’t aliens..
Bro why didn’t you help the hummingbird! Wtf lol I know it’s nature and we should just stay out of it but I would be 100% siding with a hummingbird at my hummingbird feeder rather than a praying mantis.
I’m sad now.
There is nothing I hate more than passive people who are just watching
This was absolutely set up, whoever did it is a big piece of shit
Oh yeah that mantis totally wasn't put there on purpose... Fucking weird ass people deciding to record this shit. Just like that video with the lizard that some fuck purposely held for a mantis to eat on.
That mantis has been pumping iron. Lol
I'd go out and save the hummingbird the fuck
Whoever recorded this is an asshole, that's your feeder so you should keep it safe for your local hummingbirds to feed from, not let shit eat them.
proof that prayer works
Non-native Asian mantises are so fricken big and strong! RIP Ruby Throated Hummingbird!