A giant mantis in its native hills
The Chinese mantis is famous worldwide, but most people meet it as an introduced species in North American gardens. Seeing one in Medog, Tibet, on 7 August 2024, was seeing it at home, in the forests where it has always belonged.
This is Tenodera sinensis, the Chinese mantis, one of the largest mantises in the world, a member of the family Mantidae (order Mantodea). Females can reach roughly ten centimetres long, and they come in shades of green or brown that match the vegetation around them. The long pronotum and spined raptorial forelegs make the hunting posture unmistakable, even from a distance.
It is an ambush predator, sitting motionless on vegetation and striking at anything that wanders within reach: crickets, grasshoppers, butterflies, even other mantises. The strike takes a fraction of a second, and the forelegs close like a trap lined with teeth. Mantises have eyes that cover most of their head and a neck flexible enough to look over their own shoulder, which lets them track prey without moving an inch. Males are smaller and lighter than females, a difference that becomes obvious when a pair meets in autumn. The eggs are laid in a foamy case called an ootheca that hardens into a tough, weatherproof shell, and in China this case, known as sangpiao, has a long history in traditional medicine.
In the late 1800s, Chinese mantis egg cases were shipped to North America as biological pest control, and the species is now a familiar sight in eastern American gardens, hunting much as it does in the hills of Tibet. Some things travel well.
