Sword mantis
English name: Chinese mantid
It belongs to Mantidae of mantodea.
Body length 70- 100 mm, large, all green or brown. The head is triangular with short antennae.
Mantodea insects, commonly known as mantis, broadsword mantis and axe-rejecting mantis, are relatively old insects, and their morphological structure is almost similar to that of fossil mantis 40 million years ago. Mantis is often mimicry and protective, including green leaves, dead leaves, flowers or bamboo joints. Mantis is a kind of abnormal insect. Eggs are called ebony, and mulberry trees are called ebony, which can be used as medicine. Mantis is carnivorous, fierce and aggressive, with a wide range of feeding and a large appetite. It preys on many pests in agriculture and forest areas and is the natural enemy of many pests.
Distribution: All parts of China.
Mantis in mating
1984, two scientists, E.Liske and W.J.Davis, also observed the mating of mantis in the laboratory, but made some improvements: they fed mantis in advance, dimmed the lights and let mantis enjoy it. People use cameras to record, not watch. The result was unexpected: in thirty copulations, none of them ate each other. Instead, for the first time, they recorded the complex courtship ceremony of Mantis: male and female dancing together, and the whole process was as short as 10 minute and as long as two hours. Risk and Davis believe that one of the reasons why people have frequently observed mantis eating her husband in the laboratory before is that, under direct observation, mantis without "privacy" has no chance to hold courtship ceremony, which can eliminate the malice of female mantis and is a necessary condition for male mantis to mate successfully. Another reason is that the mantis fed in the laboratory is often hungry, and the mother mantis treats her husband as delicious when she is hungry. To prove this, Riske and Davis did a series of experiments in 1987. They found that those female mantises who were in a state of high hunger (they had been hungry for 5 to 1 1 day) jumped on male mantises to grab food, and had no intention of copulation at all. A moderately hungry female mantis will mate, but will try to eat her mate during or after mating. And those females who are not hungry don't want to eat their spouses. It can be seen that the mother mantis's main motive for eating her husband is because of hunger. But in the wild, not all females can eat their bellies, so it is still possible to eat their husbands. 1992, S.E.Lawrence conducted the first large-scale field study on the mating behavior of European mantis in Portugal. About 3 1% of the mating phenomenon of mantis observed by him have eaten their husbands. In the wild, the female mantis may be moderately hungry. Eating the male mantis is really good for the offspring of mantis. A study of 1988 shows that the number of offspring of female mantis who eat their spouses is 20% more than that of those who don't. Risk and Davis also admitted that the phenomenon of European mantis eating husbands may be far more common than other mantis, and they gave mantis a bad name. However, it is obvious that the male mantis was not eaten willingly.
About two years ago, the United States published an advanced textbook called Sex and Death: An Introduction to Biophilosophy. This book introduces and discusses very professional philosophical issues such as "evolution" and "genes", which have nothing to do with sex and death. Why use such a topic? The author explained that "because this topic is very interesting" and "the biological world is wonderful and weird, at least more weird than we can imagine." In fact, the author can make it more clear: because sex and death are eternal themes in biology, just as love and death are eternal themes in literary works.
Asexual creatures can live forever through continuous division, but sexual creatures will die. Sex is the resistance to death and the beginning of a new life. These two opposing forces sometimes combine strangely. For example, the so-called "sexual cannibalism" can sometimes be observed in arachnids and insects, that is, before and after mating, or even during mating, females eat mating males. The most famous example is of course mantis. The first description of a female mantis killing her husband appeared in a German book published by 1658. 1886, an American entomologist reported a strange scene he saw in the laboratory. The female mantis ate the head of the male mantis before mating, but the headless male mantis still managed to mate. This may be the first scientific document on this phenomenon. Later, Fabres also described the situation that mantis killed her husband in Insects:
"However, in fact, mantis even has the habit of eating her husband. This is really amazing! When the female mantis eats her husband, she will bite his head and neck first, and then eat it bit by bit. Finally, only her husband's two thin wings were left. This is unbelievable. " From this description, we don't know whether Fabres saw it with his own eyes or just relayed a recognized fact. In any case, with the popularity of insects, the notoriety of female mantis "killing husband" (or, more accurately, "eating husband") and the reputation of male mantis "double suicide" are well known. Biologists even try to demonstrate the rationality of "eating husbands".
Some people say that female mantis needs a lot of energy to lay eggs, and the meat of male mantis is an excellent energy source. The decapitated male mantis can mate, which has been confirmed by experiments, because the nerve that controls mating is not in the head, but in the abdomen. Moreover, because some nerve suppression centers are located in the head, eating the head will help to enhance men's sexual ability. It's hard for a male mantis not to die.
However, few people have observed the mother mantis eating her husband in the wild. The mantis we are talking about is the general name of a large class of insects (mantodea, an order under Insecta), including 1500 kinds of mantis with different forms and different ecology. Most species of mantis have not been observed eating their husbands. This reputation is mainly attributed to two widely distributed mantis species: China's China mantis and Europe's religious mantis.
However, the phenomenon of eating husbands reported by researchers was observed in the laboratory. In this case, frightened animals usually behave abnormally. Is this really the case in the natural state? Is this really cannibalism related to reproduction, or is it simply cannibalism to fill the stomach? No one denies that mantis do kill each other, and much smaller male mantis can easily become the victim of female mantis. The question is whether this has reproductive significance.