Praying Mantis (Mantis religiosa): Facts, Diet and Life Cycle

What does a praying mantis look like?

The European mantis has a long, slender body, a small triangular head and two large compound eyes set far apart. Its front legs are “raptorial”, built for grabbing rather than walking. Each has a long, spiny thigh (femur) and a spiny shin (tibia) that snaps shut against it like a pocketknife. The four rear legs are thin and used for walking and climbing.

Most individuals are bright green or straw brown, and a few are yellowish. The color usually matches the vegetation the mantis lives in. Scientists have debated for more than a century what controls it, and both temperature and background color during molting have been suggested. Adults have two pairs of wings that reach the tip of the abdomen. The narrow, leathery outer pair protects the delicate, fan-shaped hind wings.

The best identification mark is hidden on the inside of the front legs. Near the base of each leg sits a black spot, often with a white or yellow center. These eyespots are flashed at predators during a threat display, and they are a reliable way to tell this species from similar-looking mantises.

How big is a praying mantis?

Adult females are usually 6–8 cm (2.4–3.1 in) long and males 5–7 cm (2–2.8 in). Females are heavier and stronger, with a thick abdomen full of eggs by late summer. Males are slimmer and more active, with larger eyes and longer antennae that help them find females.

Males fly well, especially on warm evenings, and sometimes turn up at lighted windows. Females have full-length wings too, but they are usually too heavy to take off, so they walk and clamber through plants instead.

The European and Chinese mantises are both introduced in North America, so the three species can be found in some of the same gardens and fields.

Where do praying mantises live?

The European mantis is native to southern and central Europe, much of Africa and a broad belt of temperate Asia east to China and Japan. Many local forms have been described as subspecies, although most are probably just regional variants. It prefers warm, sunny, open places with tall grass and shrubs: dry meadows, scrub, field edges, vineyards, railway banks and gardens.

In Europe the species is spreading north as summers warm. It now breeds in parts of Germany and Poland, has been reported from Latvia and Estonia, and is well established on Jersey in the Channel Islands. It has also been recorded in southern England in recent years.

In North America the European mantis was first found near Rochester, New York, in 1899, probably carried in with nursery plants. Later releases, made in the hope that it would control crop pests, helped it spread. It now lives across much of the northeastern United States, southern Ontario and Quebec, and parts of the West Coast. Genetic work shows that the Canadian populations descend from mantises of western France. Despite being introduced, it is the official state insect of Connecticut.

How praying mantises see and hear

Mantises hunt by sight, and their eyes are remarkable. Each compound eye of an adult European mantis contains roughly 8,000–10,000 tiny lenses (ommatidia). A forward-facing zone called the fovea gives the sharpest view, and the mantis turns its head to keep moving prey centered there. Thanks to a very flexible neck, some mantises can swivel their heads almost 180 degrees.

Mantises are also the best-studied insects with true 3D vision. In 2016, researchers at Newcastle University fitted praying mantises with tiny 3D glasses and showed them a “3D insect cinema”: the mantises struck at virtual bugs that only appeared to be within reach. A follow-up study in 2018 found that mantis stereo vision works differently from ours, relying mainly on matching movement between the two eyes. Before striking, a mantis often sways its body from side to side, which also helps it judge distance.

The small black dot that seems to follow you around a mantis’s eye is not a real pupil. It is a “pseudopupil”, the patch of lenses that happen to point straight at you and absorb the light. Mantises also have an unusual single ear in the middle of the underside of the body, between the hind legs. It is sensitive to ultrasound, and a flying mantis that hears a hunting bat’s calls dives or spirals toward the ground.

What do praying mantises eat?

The praying mantis is an ambush predator that eats only live, moving prey. It sits still among plants, often swaying gently like a leaf in the breeze, and waits for an insect to come within reach. Then the forelegs shoot out in a fraction of a second and pin the victim between their rows of spines.

Grasshoppers and crickets are favorite prey, but the European mantis also takes flies, moths, butterflies, bees, wasps, cockroaches and spiders. It begins feeding at once with its strong jaws. Larger mantis species sometimes catch small frogs, lizards and even hummingbirds, as explained in what praying mantises eat. Mantises also eat each other when they meet, so they are rarely found close together.

Mating and sexual cannibalism

In Europe most mating happens in late summer and early autumn. A male that spots a female approaches very slowly, usually from behind, freezing whenever she turns her head. Because mantises notice movement far more easily than still objects, this stop-and-go stalk can take hours. Finally he leaps onto her back and grips her with his forelegs, and mating can last several hours.

Females sometimes attack and eat males before, during or after mating. For a long time this was thought to happen only in crowded, hungry captive mantises, but a 1992 field study of European mantises found it in roughly a quarter to a third of the pairings observed in the wild. Hungry females are the most likely to do it. A male can even keep mating after losing his head, because the movements are controlled by nerve centers in his abdomen. Read more in why female mantises eat males.

Life cycle: from egg case to adult

After mating, the female lays her eggs in a frothy mass that she squeezes from her abdomen onto a stem, stone or wall in a warm, sunny spot. The froth hardens into a tough, papery egg case called an ootheca, which usually holds about 100–200 eggs. A female may make more than one.

The eggs spend the winter inside the case, and the adults die in the autumn. In late spring, once temperatures reach about 17 °C (63 °F) or more, the young hatch together, usually in the morning. Each first molts almost immediately into a tiny wingless nymph that looks like a miniature adult. Only a small fraction survive the first weeks, because many starve, dry out or are eaten, often by their own siblings.

Mantises have no pupal stage. The nymphs grow by molting their skin, about seven or eight times in this species, with females usually needing one more molt than males. Wing pads appear in the later stages, and the final molt in mid to late summer produces a winged adult.

How long do praying mantises live?

A European mantis lives about one year from egg to death, and roughly half of that time is spent as an egg waiting out the winter. Nymphs grow through the summer. Adults usually live from a few weeks to about three months and die with the first hard frosts of autumn. Males usually die sooner than females.

Predators and defenses

Mantises are eaten by birds, frogs, lizards, spiders, hornets and bats, and tiny parasitic wasps lay their own eggs inside mantis egg cases. Camouflage is the first line of defense: a green or brown mantis sitting still in grass is very hard to see.

If it is discovered, a European mantis performs a dramatic threat display. It rears up, spreads its wings and raises its forelegs to reveal the black eyespots, making itself look bigger and more dangerous. Mantises have no venom or chemical defenses, so the display is mostly a bluff, backed up by slashing forelegs and a pinch from the jaws.

Conservation status

The IUCN Red List assesses the European mantis as Least Concern, because it is widespread and common across a huge range. Locally the picture is different. In Germany it is listed as threatened on the national Red List and is legally protected, and near the northern edge of its range it survives only in a few warm, dry sites.

Warmer summers seem to be helping the species expand northward. The loss of dry, flower-rich grassland to farming and building remains a local threat, as it is for many grassland insects.

Myths and facts about praying mantises

• Myth: It is illegal to kill a praying mantis in the United States. This is an urban legend. There is no such federal law, and the mantises most often seen in many US states are introduced species.
• Myth: Female mantises always eat their mates. Most matings in the wild end with the male walking or flying away.
• Myth: Mantises are venomous or dangerous. They have neither venom nor a sting, and they are harmless to people. See do praying mantises bite?
• Myth: Mantises are excellent garden pest control. Mantises eat whatever they can catch, including bees and butterflies, and they breed only once a year. Scientists consider them of little value for controlling crop pests.
• Fact: The name has a meaning. Mantis comes from the Ancient Greek for prophet or seer, and many cultures, from ancient Greece to southern Africa, linked the insect with mystery and prophecy.

With its swiveling head, 3D eyes and lightning-fast forelegs, the praying mantis is one of the most recognizable insects in Europe and North America, even though it is a much smaller predator than the largest insects in the world.