What comes to mind when you think of praying mantises? The expert pest catcher or the "black widow" who eats the "husband"?
Or think of that idiom, the praying mantis catches the yellow finches in the back!
There are currently more than 2,400 species of praying mantises found around the world, and 247 species are known in China, most of which live in the tropics, and the rest are almost all in temperate regions.
As insects, praying mantises are not only eaten by yellow finches during the day, but also evade bats at night. During the day they can disguise themselves as part of a plant to avoid predators, and at night this trick is not easy. So, there are some species of praying mantises that have evolved a special system to deal with, and the core of this system is their unique ears.
The ears of the praying mantis have three monsters:
First, it has only one ear.
Second, the ear does not grow on the head, but between the legs under the abdomen.
Third, this ear cannot distinguish the direction or frequency of sound. It has only one role, that is, to detect whether bats have positioned themselves when they emit sound waves.
The praying mantis is a visual animal that can also move well outside in dim light. By this time the birds had returned to their nests to rest, replaced by bats.
When flying at night, the praying mantis uses their unique ears to collect the surrounding sound waves, and when they find that the sound waves of a particular frequency are getting stronger and stronger, they know that there are bats nearby, so the praying mantis stops flying horizontally and begins to make a spiraling descent toward the ground. When a bat flies over, it's hard to tell if it's an edible insect.
Some praying mantises react slowly, do not find the nearby bats in time, and can only use their two front legs to fight the bats after being caught.