Praying Mantis vs. Cicada
The last couple of weeks I’ve noticed this praying mantis hiding beneath one of my passionfruit leaves. I discovered it clasping an alive-and-kicking cicada in a super-ninja hold. It spent the following hours slowly eating into it until all that was left was a husk and two wings and a praying mantis with an enormously distended belly.
Update: I’ve just spotted it again and this time it’s got an alive wasp. How the hell do they manage to catch these things?
We are busy building and tearing down in our mechanical world thinking that we are IT. But just beneath a leaf is a killing machine. It is a good to take a breath and a step back and look more closely at the little things and the vastness of the sky. Great photography Damian.
Coincidentally, a podcast that I regularly listen to; This Way Up with Simon Morton, had a show this weekend about praying mantids. Not sure how long it’ll be available for though.