tags: preying mantis, mouse, streaming video
Do you think it is weird that an insect could eat a mammal? Well, it happens, although not commonly. In this case, I have a streaming video that shows a preying mantis hunting and then eating a mouse. I sure wish I had a flock of preying mantids in my apartment; they'd defintely be well-fed there!
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You really should train your parrots better.
Bob
Reminds me of student days in Williamsburg, VA. The townfolk allowed their pets to roam despite a perceived threat that W&M students would feed them. I encountered a housecat outside the Commons dining hall in the woods one time. The cat rubbed around me, jumped into the undergrowth, and emerged with a struggling mouse, which the cat promtly ate from the head back. Attached to the cat's collar was a note asking that no one feed the cat. A faded, elderly beagle regularly got into the Commons and begged food from table to table in the mid-1970s. One day he showed up with a collar note reading, "Please do not feed Ralph. He comes home and gets sick." So it went with the food chain in the Williamsburg area near campus.
Reminds me of a documentary I once watched -- can't remember the subject, but at least the segment was about burrow-dwelling tarantulas in South America. In one piece, a lizard wandered down into an occupied burrow and was killed and devoured by the spider; over very close-up video of the spider's face as it scraped bits of lizard into its maw with its mandibles, the narrator said "It will take 17 hours, but the spider will eat the entire lizard." Yeeeegggghhhh...
But seriously, invertebrates eat vertebrates all the time, especially in the marine realm, so while an insect eating a mammal may seem somewhat unusual, overall, the idea of "lower animals" consuming "higher animals" is by no means weird. (Yet another reason that the "lower" and "higher" categories should be abolished!)
That is some scary stuff, and I for one, welcome our new insect overlords! Seriously though, It's got to be pretty dangerous for the mantis to pull that off. One well placed bite from that mouse would ruin the mantis' day. I once saw a picture of a mantis eating a humming bird too.
Holy mouse poop,batman!
Is it really a surprise that the creatures from the Alien movies look like a preying mantis?
Not the first time I'm watching this, but every time I see this, I can't help but think of two things:
i) AWESOME.
ii) Sucks to be that mouse.
Love to eat them mousies...mousies what I love to eat.
But it just seems so WRONG.
Well, it is all Kung Fu and stuff right.
He struck with the Mantis Claw and followed up with the death grip!
But while mantisis do have a hard beak, aren't their mouths kind of small? Maybe is a vampire mantis and is only going to DRINK the blood....
Fascinating as always. I used to get the largest mantis from the weeds and place them carefully in my garden. Now I will place them even MORE carefully.
Google for "centipede" and "mouse"/"bat".
You'll see these HUGE centipedes just devour our poor cousins :(.
My mammal ego was hurt!