This is yet another insect that I haven't seen in a long time. The last time that I saw a praying mantis was over 20 years ago. This one, however, I discovered on my kitchen ceiling as I was preparing to cook supper (prawn and scallop scampi, if anyone is curious).
How the mantis got into my kitchen is anyone's guess, since they are large insects (this one is about ten centimetres long, though there's no way she'd hold still long enough for me to get an accurate measurement), but I know why she was there - I'm overrun with crickets. Why she was on the ceiling, specifically, is also a mystery to me, since the crickets stay on the floor.
After capturing the mantis, which was an interesting experience (I didn't know that their thoraxes are flexible), I cooked for myself, then fed the mantis after seeing a cricket hopping about. I gave her another cricket today, though she seemed more fastidious than hungry today (she ignored the cricket and chose to wash her legs instead).
Unlike the cicada that I caught the day before, mantises live long lives as adults, so this one may be the subject of a future video.
I cannot promise that she'll look the same, however, since mantises change colour to match their surroundings. This is a slow process, not instantaneous as in the case of octopuses, but it can be observed over the course of hours. This one in particular was entirely green when I caught her, but parts have turned brown. Most curiously, her eyes turned black shortly after I captured her, probably because she was inside an overturned glass bowl on a black table.
I suppose an interesting experiment would be to re-locate her container (which is transparent) to different environments and see what colours she turns.
Camera: Nikon D3100
Lens: AF-S Nikkor 18-55mm
Lighting: terrible