In the London studio, photographers are filming the mating process of praying mantises for show in a documentary.
What the photographer did not expect was that the praying mantis did not perform according to the "script", and the female praying mantis actually attacked the male, that is, her "husband", during the mating process, and slowly ate the other party in the process.
The photographer thought the picture was messed up, and suddenly someone shouted excitedly: "Oh, they are mating!" ”
Photographers know that they are photographing the phenomenon of "sexual eating the same kind" that occurs on the mantis, according to the staff: the phenomenon of the mantis attacking the "husband" during mating is not known how often it occurs in the wild, but it does happen.
What surprised the photographer even more was that the male mantis's head had been eaten by the female, which meant that life was over, but its body was still mating!
That is to say, although it is dead, its body is still performing the task of reproducing offspring, and if the female can conceive, the task is completed for the male, and its genes will continue to pass on.
This is not the first time that mantises have found the phenomenon of eating the same kind, nor is it the first time that males can complete the reproductive action after death.
In the documentary "You Bad Boy", the photographer documents the attack of a praying mantis on the "husband".
During the breeding season, female praying mantises agitate their abdomen and release large amounts of pheromones to tell the surrounding males: I'm ready.
After the male received the female's signal, he came all the way, originally thought he was a dating beauty, but he did not expect to be hit by the "beauty plan", in the mating process, the female mantis bit each other and ate the other.
Other female praying mantises are very thin and do not have enough energy to lay eggs, but they still release pheromones to attract the opposite sex, and researchers have found that the more hungry the females, the more concentrated the pheromones released.
When the male arrives, the female has no time to mate with it, and will swallow it in one bite and become the female's food.
The discovery was also confirmed in the laboratory, where scientists collected 24 praying mantises and raised them in the lab, with different mantis feeding levels divided into four groups: very poor, poor, medium and excellent.
They are then placed in special containers where the males can only smell the temperature, but cannot see the males inside.
It stands to reason that females with excellent breeding conditions attract more males because their bodies are suitable for breeding offspring. But the results showed that the females with the worst feeding conditions attracted more males than the other groups, which also showed that the hungrier the female, the more concentrated the pheromones released, and the more willing the males were to approach it and mate with it. This may be the "beauty plan" in nature!
Mantises are the same kind of sexual diet
In our opinion, the mantis sexual eater is very cruel, but there is no moral restraint in nature, and all the actions taken by animals are to survive, and mantises are no exception.
For praying mantises, females need a lot of energy to lay eggs, and the opposite sex is the food that is available at hand, especially in the mantis family, the female is a fierce hunter, the male is not as big and powerful as the female, and the female has sufficient confidence to control each other.
For males, burying in the mouth of a female is a bit tragic, but it is not a bad thing for genes, because the death of a male can allow females to obtain a lot of energy and improve the survival rate of offspring.
A study of spiders found that there is also a phenomenon of sexual predators in spider families, in which female spiders that eat their "husbands" will lay larger and more eggs.
The same is true for praying mantises, researchers found that after eating the "husband", the female's egg production was 20% higher than that of not eating the "husband", which means that eating the "husband" can make the "husband's" gene be better passed on, and the gene spreads from generation to generation, so this survival strategy is preserved by nature.
Researchers have found that after the head of the praying mantis falls, the body can still complete mating, what is going on?
It turns out that this is the reflex movement of male praying mantises. The center of this reflex movement is not in the head, but in the terminal ganglia of the abdomen, and the body is able to automatically complete the reproductive action regardless of whether there is a head or not during mating.
Even if the male praying mantis only has an abdomen left, the body can still complete the reproductive movement. In the process of evolution, such males are more favored by natural selection. So this survival strategy was preserved and continued from generation to generation.
Hungry praying mantises
Although female praying mantises eat the same kind, researchers have found that not all praying mantises will eat each other, and the main factor that prompts females to eat each other is hunger.
In 1987, Richecker and Davis experimented with mantises, dividing them into three groups: highly hungry, moderately hungry, and well-fed.
They were then put together with male praying mantises, and it turned out that well-fed female praying mantises did not want to eat their mates;
Moderately hungry praying mantises, although mating, will still attack male mantises before or during mating;
The heavily hungry mantis obviously treats the other person as food, and when it sees the male mantis, it attacks the other party.
That is, whether the praying mantises will prey on "husbands" depends mainly on whether they are hungry. Some praying mantises have evolved a countermeasure in which the male gives the female a portion of food before mating, and the female focuses on eating food and does not attack the male again.
And those stupid, unsatisfactory males are more likely to be preyed upon by females.
Of course, although the female eating the "husband" can significantly increase the number and survival rate of the offspring, the "husband" obviously does not want to dedicate himself to this, so in the mating process, they will also be careful, if there is a chance, they also want to escape, but sometimes they can't run!
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