An axe mantis I know from home
I keep mantises at home, so meeting a wild one is always special. This one turned up in Medog, Tibet, on 7 August 2024, and it felt like visiting an old friend in its own country: a big, solid green mantis with the broad, powerful build of the genus Hierodula, the axe mantises of Asia.
This is Hierodula beieri, a mantis of the family Mantidae (order Mantodea). The genus holds some of the largest mantises in Asia, and the Chinese name for the group, axe mantis, comes from the broad, blade-like raptorial forelegs. It is an ambush hunter that will happily tackle prey close to its own size, striking with a speed that makes the wait worth it.
The species name honours Max Beier, the Austrian entomologist who described and catalogued a huge share of the world’s mantis species in the last century. Like other Hierodula, the eggs are laid in a foam case that hardens into a tough ootheca, and depending on the season the young may wait out a cold spell inside it before hatching. That little foam box is one of the toughest structures in the insect world, and it protects the eggs through weather that would kill an adult in an afternoon.
A species you keep in a cage becomes a different animal when you meet it wild. The same green shape that waits patiently in my terrarium was out here doing exactly what it has always done, under a rainforest canopy, needing nothing from me at all.
