When you think of praying mantises, what's the first thing that comes to mind? It must have been the exaggerated pair of powerful sickle-shaped forefoots that could kill other lives at any time. The most frightening thing is that the pair of forefoots is still a foraging tool for female mantises during mating, but the object of their foraging is not flies and mosquitoes, but the "groom officer" who is sowing genetic material on "her" - male mantis, often before mating is over, or even before it happens, the groom's head has already entered her stomach.
This is the traditional mating diet of many mantises in nature, and everyone has become accustomed to it, and the male mantis is more or less aware of this sacrifice to be a groom. However, scientists have recently discovered that a spotted light mantis accidentally introduced to New Zealand from South Africa has begun to practice a special martial arts move, which can survive the fierce mating battle, both inheriting its genes and saving its life, becoming a "groom" and not being eaten, which is simply the happiest "man" in the world.
However, looking at my final analysis, you can see that playing this kind of cleverness is actually not a good thing, and escaping being eaten is actually a very selfish behavior.
Sexual eclipse is a term used to describe this phenomenon, referring to the behavior of organisms before, during or after mating, attacking and preying on mating objects, usually females eating males - the reverse should not be true, males eat females, who will give birth to cubs?
Although only 38 of the entire 2400 species of praying mantis have been recorded, only 7 have been confirmed to be husband and wife who never have sex, and scientists estimate that most mantis species have this terrible sexual eating behavior without a "mantis" path.
So how did this kind of life-and-death mating war develop?
This may be related to the passive feeding pattern of praying mantises.
Although the pair of sickle feet of the praying mantis looks powerful and powerful in sexual food, it is not very useful at other times, and there are many natural enemies, often used as snacks by bats, frogs, lizards, birds, etc. The mantis's defense skills are basically limited to camouflage, protecting itself through protective colors; when this primary defense trick does not work, it will activate secondary defense: one scare, two runs, three pretends to die.
If that doesn't work, some praying mantises develop the ability to hear ultrasound waves to evade bats. Bats have bad eyes, generally rely on ultrasonic waves to locate food, while flying, while constantly using other species can not hear the ultrasonic chanting mantra: heavenly spirit spirit spirit, delicious food is about to appear... When these sound waves hit other creatures, they bounce back, allowing bats to hear the mouth-watering response of the food: I'm here, it's delicious, come and eat it! After these praying mantises can hear the ultrasound, as the bats get closer and closer, the ultrasound is getting higher and higher, and the danger is getting bigger and bigger, they will see the timing and spiral down to avoid the attack of the bat. Isn't it super awesome?
After saying that you are eaten, let's talk about eating. Mantises are wide-feeding arthropod predators, naturally eating only live prey, but they are also passive lazy hunters who wait for rabbits, usually quietly lurking somewhere, waiting for the prey to pass by and suddenly attack.
Although they have a wide range of food, including lizards, frogs, small birds or fish, but ambush attacks inevitably do not catch the same kind, it is quite delicious to taste, and over time the smaller kind of people will naturally become the target of hunting.
In such a situation, if the female praying mantis has a delicious taste, is there a reason not to eat it? How do you choose between food and sex? So the male mantis is not so much about sending genetic material as it is about sending protein material. The mantis's sex war has probably become a terrible tradition, eat first and then sex, and what is the sex without food? So in some cultures, the female praying mantis becomes the representative of the "deadly lover" who does not care about anything for the sake of profit.
The spotted mantis (miomantis caffra) is native to South Africa and may have spread to New Zealand through the pet trade, and is a model of mating food.
According to a 1994 study, about 13-28% of male mantises are eaten in nature during sexual warfare, but Nathan Burke, a bioscience researcher at the University of Auckland in New Zealand, found that the proportion of males eaten in spotted mantises reached a staggering 60%, which prompted him to capture 104 and 52 pairs of spotted mantises to begin observation and research.
Burke found that the sexual food of other mantises was found before, during and after mating, while the spotted mantis almost all occurred before mating, which meant that the spotted mantis "bride" did not care about mating at all, but only cared about eating.
Why is that? Burke found that this is because the eggs of the female spotted mantis can reproduce without fertilization, she can reproduce in solitary females, so the male has become a synonym for food in her eyes, even if the male let her fertilize, it is estimated that she does not understand the meaning at all.
Isn't that scary? An entire species of males are faced with this deadly embarrassment, people don't want you to give birth to cubs, what is the use of you living? Human males should feel very lucky.
The male of the spotted mantis is not vegetarian, then fight, the overlord is the bow, you have to do it, you have to let me give birth to cubs.
So the male praying mantis began to practice the skills of preventing eating and mating successfully, and then began to carefully approach the intended bride from behind, and quickly flapped his wings and jumped on their backs. The bride looked back and said, "Well, how come there's food coming to the door automatically?" This is not much to see Ha, stretch out the sickle foot, the left hand fork, the right hand knife is going to eat.
If the groom official successfully clamps the bride with his sickle foot and gains the upper hand in hand-to-hand combat for more than ten seconds, he will have the opportunity to forcibly merge, send his genetic material into the bride's body, and successfully escape, and the song and swallow dance continue to live.
Once the groom's officer fails to succeed, being pinned by the bride in the early or late mating battle is the beginning of his tragic fate, although 67% of the male mantises still have the opportunity to complete mating, but half will still be eaten, while 13% are eaten before they are completed, and 20% are eaten without mating at all.
Sexual mating battles between male and female are relatively rare, occurring only twice, and both grooms survived, one of whom mated successfully.
Of course, the male-female battle of the mantis is not always profitable for the female, and in Burke's observation, 4 females were also injured by the male mantis, leaving obvious scars on the body. It is unclear whether these injuries pose a danger or effect to females.
In other studies, it has been shown that the lifespan of the praying mantis is only about one year, and the female praying mantis usually dies after laying the egg sheath, and its offspring are protected in the egg sheath and hatch after the winter.
So at this time, looking at the mantis's sexual mating war, the male is so resistant to being eaten is actually very selfish. The bride is only to obtain protein to produce eggs and sheaths, to provide protection for future generations to survive the winter, and to sacrifice after completing her mission. What does the groom have to make a little sacrifice to inherit his genes? Instead of dying in other places and being eaten by other species, it is better to be generous and let "she" eat it, just delay it. So the mantis bride can be completely righteous, and while eating, she chokes up and says: Honey, this is for your own good, for our offspring.
Love her, let her eat it!
The study was published In Biology Letters, Jan. 20.
论文：male coercion and female injury in a sexually cannibalistic mantis