The Devil Is in The Details
If you know what to look for… The Praying Mantis
It’s high Spring in North India. From the delicate violas to the feisty sunflower, all are in bloom.
My garden is flush with native plants. And that means — insects.
There’s ceaseless arrival and predation — whatever little I can observe daily is great food for thought. Birth and death are the same.
I’ve been keenly observing some of the resident praying mantises. Till now I’ve spotted 4 of them. Incidentally, they’re perched in 4 corners of the garden.
Each has claimed its throne on one particular plant— night blooming jasmine, hybrid rose, sunflower, crown daisy.
Can you believe that there are ~2400 species of them worldwide? 200 of those are found in India.
According to Wiki, the largest family is the Mantidae. They have triangular heads with bulging eyes supported on flexible necks. And, they are the only insects that can turn their heads side-to-side 180 degrees. As if that wasn’t impressive enough, they can also spot movement up to 60 feet away!(1)
One reason for this is because they are the only invertebrate in the world that can see in 3D, which helps them detect motion. Their enhanced vision comes from their five eyes. Two large ones that face forward and three smaller ones that only detect light and motion.(2)
Which technically means that a mantis would have noticed me approaching it way before I’d have managed to spot it. They have excellent camouflage skills, and can even change colors after they molt their exoskeletons to blend in better.
Now, I was absolutely unaware of the fact that they can molt.
Yesterday the rose mantis (the 1 inch one on the rose) molted — and I was just in time to notice its white, almost transparent exoskeleton drifting down to the underbush. The little monster suddenly appeared bigger to me.
The day before I noticed the tiny (~2.5 cm) Ant mantis switching color from jet black to patchy grey — it’s still the same today. Maybe it’s going to molt soon?
But today — I caught the mantis on jasmine molting!
This one was already ~2.5 inches long when I first found it traipsing among the blooms a week ago. It happened to be shedding the last bit of its old cloak as I approached it around 6 in the morning.
Casting an irreverant glance at me, it inched upwards toward the tip of the shoot, and posed an elegant figure in the sunlight. Now it looks bigger by almost an inch or so!
The Devil Is in The Details
The adorable mighty little giant beasts of the garden.
References:(1)https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/facts/praying-mantis
(2)https://www.reconnectwithnature.org/news-events/the-buzz/five-things-know-about-praying-mantis/
You might like my recent Spring special article —
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Thank you for reading :)
