A story that began one August

By Laura Lance

After spending too much of my summer energies mourning the tragedies of the latest US war, I’ve decided to put my time, my research skills, and my helplessness to better use: explaining the enchanting beasts that have been summering on the moonflower vine outside our kitchen window.

Of Physiognomy

I considered all possible lenses through which to view these moonflower enchantresses — the poetic, the literary, the philosophical, the scientific. I finally settled on them all, turning the matter over to the authority on each and every facet, Jean-Henri Fabre, the father of literary entomology.

It was Fabre who, during the 19th century, was born to this earth possessing the tongue of a poet, the soul of a philosopher, and an innate, yet uncanny fascination with insects. The scientific instrument has yet to be invented that could hope to replicate what Fabre observed with the naked eye. His gift to science endures today, not just because of the body of knowledge he left on each insect he studied, but because, in his words, “I cause it to be loved.”

Unlike many scientists, Fabre did not travel the world to discover the exotic, but found it within the kingdom of his own backyard. Gathering his subjects from nearby fields and woods, he assembled a menagerie that included fantastical Great Peacock Moths, Pine Processionary Caterpillars, Sacred Beetles, Cicadas and that veritable tigress of the insect kingdom, the Praying Mantis, about whom he eloquently observed:

She is not without a certain beauty, in fact, with her slender figure, her elegant bust, her pale-green coloring and her long gauze wings. No ferocious mandibles, opening like shears; on the contrary, a dainty pointed muzzle that seems made for billing and cooing…. Alone among insects, the Mantis directs her gaze; she inspects and examines; she almost has a physiognomy. Fabre, J. Henri, The Life of the Grasshopper , 1917, p. 115.

But Fabre was no romantic. He was nothing, if not shrewd in his observation of the Mantis, whose mating habits, he said, went “beyond the wildest dreams of the most horrible imagination. I have seen it done with my own eyes,” he wrote, “and have not yet recovered from my astonishment.”

I find, by themselves, a horrible couple engaged as follows. The male, absorbed in the performance of his vital functions, holds the female in a tight embrace. But the wretch has no head; he has no neck; he has hardly a body. The other, with her muzzle turned over her shoulder continues very placidly to gnaw what remains of the gentle swain. And, all the time, that masculine stump, holding on firmly, goes on with the business!

Love is stronger than death, men say. Taken literally, the aphorism has never received a more brilliant confirmation. A headless creature, an insect amputated down to the middle of the chest, a very corpse persists in endeavouring to give life. It will not let go until the abdomen, the seat of the procreative organs, is attacked. — Fabre, J. Henri, The Life of the Grasshopper , 1917, p. 144.

I, myself, have never witnessed this act, although we have been watching the Praying Mantises outside the window since July — watching them tranform from thin-waisted maidens, to fat, egg-laden matrons. Ours are neither the European Mantis (Mantis religiosa) of Fabre’s laboratory, nor the giant Chinese Mantis (Tenodera sinensis) whose manners gave birth to the Praying Mantis school of kung fu in 17th century China. The latter mantises are immigrants, which traveled to America aboard nursery stock around the time of the Spanish-American War and are now naturalized.

Our moon flower sisters are Carolina Mantises (Stagmomantis carolina), which are not only native to this land but are the official State Insect of my home state, South Carolina.

The moon flower vine was not my first encounter with the Carolina Mantis. Several years ago, in another house, a lovely she-Mantis lived in the Japanese ligustrum beside my front porch, where the two of us watched, in tandem, the passers-by. Here she is:

She was my first day-to-day, up-close encounter with a Mantis — the first Mantis with whom I exchanged eye contact and experienced that ethereal thing that Mantises do. Tracking my movement with that curiously pivoting head, she watched as I peered through the branches trying to find the best angle for viewing her. She watched me; I watched her. In utter silence, and each for our own reasons, we gazed.

During my reading, I’ve puzzled over the treatment of the Mantis by modern science. How is it possible to reduce such a fantastically-constructed creature to so much white noise? I’ll show you.

Compare the forelegs (seen in ‘prayer’ in the photograph above) with the photo, below, taken this summer. Then compare these photos to the following two descriptions — both quoted from scientific texts.

First, the “modern science” treatment:

“The mantid’s forelegs are raptorial with elongated coxae and femora with the presence of opposed rows of spines on the femora and the tibiae.” — Prete, Frederic R., Et. al,, The Praying Mantids, 1999, p. 21.

Imagine pages of such text. Is it any wonder that schoolchildren sometimes daydream of other worlds during science lessons? For Prete and company, that one sentence sufficed for those deadly arms.

Not so for J. Henri Fabre:

Those arms, folded in prayer, are cut-throat weapons: they tell no beads, they slay whatever passes within range….  Great, indeed is the contrast between the body as a whole, with its very pacific aspect, and the murderous mechanism of the forelegs, which are correctly described as raptorial. The haunch is uncommonly long and powerful. Its function is to throw forward the rat-trap, which does not await its victim but goes in search of it. The snare is decked out with some show of finery….

The thigh, longer still, a sort of flattened spindle, carries on the front half of its lower surface two rows of sharp spikes. In the inner row there are a dozen, alternately black and green, the green being shorter than the black. This alternation of unequal lengths increases the number of cogs and improves the effectiveness of the weapon. The outer row is simpler and has only four teeth. Lastly, three spurs, the longest of all, stand out beneath the two rows. In short, the thigh is a saw with two parallel blades, separated by a groove in which the leg lies when folded back.

The leg, which moves very easily on its joint with the thigh, is likewise a double-edged saw. The teeth are smaller, more numerous and closer together than those on the thigh. It ends in a strong hook whose point vies the finest needle for sharpness, a hook fluted underneath and having a double blade like a curved pruning knife. …

When at rest, the trap is folded and pressed back against the chest and looks quite harmless. There you have the insect praying. But, should a victim pass, the attitude of prayer is dropped abruptly. Suddenly, unfolded, the three long sections of the machine throw to a distance their terminal grapnel, which harpoons the prey and, in returning, draws it back between the two saws. The vice closes with a movement like that of the forearm and upper arm; and all is over. Locusts, Grasshoppers and others even more powerful, once caught in the mechanism with its four rows of teeth, are irretrievably lost. Neither their desperate fluttering nor their kicking will make the terrible engine release its hold. —  

Fabre, J. Henri, The Life of the Grasshopper , 1917, pp. 115-118.

And so the long days of summer have passed among the leaves of the moon flower vine. I can only take Fabre’s word for what has commenced at night in the near-glow of our kitchen light. We’ve never witnessed it. Just the half-eaten remains the morning after — here and there a moth carcass, a scattering of legs and wings, a camel cricket reduced to mere junkyard salvage, its front-end picked of its choice parts, the headlights snatched from their sockets, its taut legs reduced to lifeless wires. 

Too, there’s been the steady growth of the two sisters, their appearance as different as night and day. One is colored the precise green of the moonflower stems, each of her wings marked with a single, dark eye-spot, called a stigma, which not only mimics leaf blemishes and stem scars, but — with a mere unfurling of her wings — can double as fierce eyes to startle and fend off potential attackers. The other Mantis wears a simple mottled brown frock that depends on the kindness of dead leaves for camouflage.

Both are no doubt responsible for the mysterious disappearance of the ant trails that boldy paraded up and down the vines during early summer, using the vines as a superhighway between the azaleas and the kitchen window, inside which the ants stole to smuggle the stray sugar granules scattered about the coffeepot. We owe the Mantises a debt of gratitude for putting an end to these night marauders, even as our gratitude is tinged with remorse for any Sphinx Moths we unintentionally lured to their deaths by our decision to plant the moonflower vine in that location.

It is with a similar sadness that we see summer coming to a close. As each day of August winds to an end, we are one day closer to the conclusion of the Mantises’ life cycles. If they’ve not already done so, the femme fatales will release, any night now, their pheromones to draw the male Mantises — much smaller and thinner by comparison — who will fertilize the eggs that have so swollen their female’s abdomens. Throughout the courtship season, each female may receive many gentleman callers. 

Contrary to popular myth, it is not a given that the male will be consumed during consummation. This practice varies greatly between Mantis species, with the European Mantis being more inclined to cannibalize her mate, and the Carolina Mantis being quite disinclined to do so — to the extent, in fact, that it rarely happens in the wild, unless she is very hungry.

In all cases, this practice is more common in captivity than in the field, where there is less likelihood of the artificial distractions and mis-directed visual cues, which are believed to scramble the sequence of events and trigger the predatory response in the female. 

Within a week or so of mating, the female sows the seeds of their progeny. These will be secreted inside a tan, meringue-like egg case, called an ootheca, which she will affix to nearby vegetation or structure. This foamy concoction — measuring, give or take, an inch in length — will quickly set, its myriad tiny air bubbles providing the perfect insulation against the elements for the neatly arranged catacomb of eggs inside. According to Fabre, “the whole thing demands about two hours of concentrated work, free from interruption.”

If this confection doesn’t become the foodstuffs of lizards, wasps or ants during autumn and winter, it will bloom to hatching, come next spring, with 200 or so hungry and often cannibalistic nymphs. The mother may or may not spend the balance of summer watching over her egg cases. Regardless, the laying of the eggs is the beginning of her swan song. By the end of September, the beautiful enchantresses will likely be dead.

The Cyclopean Ear

I apologize that our rudimentary camera skills do not offer a better view of the Mantis’ fascinating ear. Our best efforts at photographing the Mantises, which you see on this page, are testament to my daughter’s persistence with the camera. Below is the underside view of the brown Carolina Mantis on the kitchen window as viewed from indoors.

The single ear of the Mantis, which is unique to the Mantis kingdom — and, even then, to only certain species — is located on the metathorax. Look for it  in the pinkish, fleshy area of the belly between the two pairs of legs, where it’s punctuated at its base with a whitish, tooth-shaped appendage, called a bifid horn or tooth, which is also part of the ear. This hearing organ — aptly called a cyclopean ear — has been much-studied by scientists to determine both its purpose and the advantages to its odd location.

Some Mantises, (although I cannot confirm this in the Carolina Mantis), have a second cyclopean ear — a mesothoracic ear — located higher up  in the mesothorax, which is capable of hearing in lower ranges, below 10 kHz. I mention this because, to my eyes, there appears to a second ear structure in the photo, above. I hope to one day learn more about this.

In the female, the metothoracic cyclopean ear is little more than a vestigial organ — her hearing capacity diminished or entirely absent, as is the case with most, if not all, of the flightless mantids. Flighted males, on the other hand — who take to the air at night in search of the sirens’ pheromone perfume  — need this ear to evade bats, one of their most formidable predators. As such, this ear is set to detect frequencies between 25-60 kHz with thresholds of 50 to 60 decibels— the precise range of bat echolations. At the first hint of this ultrasonic tuning fork, the Mantis stalls mid-flight, like a disabled bi-plane, instantly lowering his wings, which sends him into a freefall spiral toward the ground. Being a single ear, this cyclopean ear lacks the stereo perception necessary to pinpointing the direction of the sound.

Not so with the cerci. Both male and female Mantises (as well as myriad other insects) own a certain capacity for hearing through their cerci, that pair of beaded, antenna-like appendages near the very tip of their rear. Unlike the cylopean ear, designed to hear bats from a relative distance, the cerci are equipped to detect  ‘near-field’ sounds — from the arrival of a suitor, to the arrival of prey or, alternately, a predator. In females, the cerci are also used in the delicate frothing and shaping of the ootheca. Studies suggest that the cerci also aid the flighted Mantis in fine-tuning the location of the bat.

I can add little more on the topic of hearing, having already suffered through reading what modern science has to say on its studies of the cyclopean ear and the cerci, which left me with sort of gut pain a person feels reading about human torture and other crimes of war. The modern scientific methods for studying these auditory organs invariably involve barbaric procedures, with much cutting and slitting of the Mantis’s body, including fullscale amputations and decapitations. From this point, the Mantis is wired with various sensors, and its hearing organs coated with wax or petroleum jelly, before being tethered in a laboratory room, to see how it interacts with a bat. If only Fabre were still alive to tutor these scientists in the art of observation.

You rip up the animal, and I study it alive; you turn it into an object of horror and pity, whereas I cause it to be loved; you labour in a torture-chamber and dissecting room, and I make my observations under the blue sky to the song of the Cicadas, you subject cell and protoplasm to chemical tests, I study instinct in its loftiest manifestations; you pry into death, I pry into life. — Fabre, J. Henri, “The Harmas.” The Life of the Fly, 1913, p. 3

Unlike the cyclops ear — the acuity of which increases, as a rule, in direct proportion to the wing-length — the cerci seem to exist in equal measure, regardless of flight abilities or the sex of the mantis. The cerci appear to work in conjunction with the Mantis’ eyes for surveying the surroundings. Mantises have five eyes in all:  two large compound eyes with stereoscopic, color vision, that are adept at gauging distance, plus three simple eyes, called ocelli. Located in a triangular formation between the antennae, the ocelli are larger and better developed in males, and are believed to aid in discerning between light and dark. (An aside: to see excellent images of these eyes, plus the source for this information, click here: cirrusimage.com)

Even as the Mantis has excellent eyesight — capable of both sharp, near-distance vision, and the ability to detect movement up to 60 feet away —  its compound eyes command only a 300° field of vision, just 60° shy of encompassing a full circle. It makes sense, then, that the Mantis would need compensation for this built-in blind spot, the cerci being the equivalent of the back-up camera in modern vehicles. 

That males and female, alike, have well-developed cerci lends credence to the theory that the primary purpose of these organs is to alert the Mantis to approaching prey and predators in the bush, which is where the female Carolina Mantis spends the majority of her life.

This is because the wings of the female Carolina Mantis, in contrast to the male, are of little use for flying. Arriving late in life, and only after her final molt — the last of 7 to 10 molts she undergoes over her lifetime — these wings are too short for real flight and are of no use once her belly becomes too cumbersome for such lofty aspirations. The important thing, however, is not what she can’t do, but what she can do with these exquisite parasails.

An August Affair

The morning we took the photo, below, our attention had been drawn from our morning routines in the kitchen to the startling sight of the brown Mantis outside the window — her barbed forelegs waving about in a most un-prayerful manner, her wings unfurled like an exotic bird of paradise. Something was the matter.

Whatever the matter, it was pressing enough to render the nearby spittle bug inconsequential. The two Mantises spent the balance of the morning moving about the vine, much like boxers in a ring, only they inched further and further apart until, at last, the brown one removed herself entirely from the equation — creeping, brick by brick, away from the vine entirely and to the upper reaches of the window frame, where she took up residence.

From my reading, I suspect that the two sisters were involved in a standoff, which is not uncommon in mid to late August, as the females bellies become swollen with eggs. Witnessing this behavior in his laboratory, Fabre wondered if this were unique to confined females, or if it also occurred in the wild. Regardless, he kept his charges well-fed during this life stage, so that “should civil war break out, famine cannot be pleaded as the excuse.” Fabre’s description of this mysterious affair deserves reading:

At first, things go pretty well. The community lives in peace, each Mantis grabbing and eating whatever comes near her, without seeking strife with her neighbours. But this harmonious period does not last long. The bellies swell, the eggs are ripening in the ovaries, marriage and laying-time are at hand. Then a sort of jealous fury bursts out, although there is an entire absence of males who might be held reponsible for feminine rivalry. The working of the ovaries seems to pervert the flock, inspiring its members with a mania for devouring one another. There are threats, personal encounters, cannibal feasts. Once more, the spectral pose appears, the hissing of the wings, the fearsome gesture of the grapnels outstretched and uplifted in the air….

For no reason that I can gather, two neighbours suddenly assume their attitude of war. They turn their heads to the right and left, provoking each other, exchanging insulting glances. The “Puff! Puff!” of the wings rubbed by the abdomen sounds the charge….

Then one of the grapnels, with a sudden spring, shoots out to its full length and strikes the rival; it is no less abruptly withdrawn and resumes the defensive. The adversary hits back…. At the first blood drawn from her flabby paunch, or even before receiving the least wound, one of the duellists confesses herself beaten and retires. The other furls her battle-standard and does off elsewhither to mediate the capture of a Locust, keeping apparently calm, but ever ready to repeat the quarrel.

Very often, events take a more tragic turn. At such times, the full posture of the duels to the death is assumed. The murderous fore-arms are unfolded and raised in the air. Woe to the vanquished! The other seizes her in her vice and then and there proceeds to eat her, beginning at the neck, of course. —Fabre, J. Henri, The Life of the Grasshopper , 1917, pp. 138-140

If the green Mantis ever responded in kind — unfurling the fury of her battle regalia toward the brown Mantis — we missed it.  To our observation, she never changed her prayerful pose, but instead moved carefully about the vine, her intent appearing to be no more complex than to keep a safe distance from the brown Mantis. During this fracas, she did something she never does — haplessly straying from the safety of her camouflage into bold sight, backdropped by tan brick.

An Inexplicable Peace

One July morning — long before the morning of the August spat — I’d gone out to the moonflower vine to spend a spell watching the green mantis. Until that morning, we were oblivious to the existence of the brown Mantis, even as we’d spent many long spells gazing into the leaves, tracing every inch of the vines trying to locate the well-camouflaged green Mantis. 

Not so on this particular July morning. Right there, in plain sight, was the green Mantis, poised beside what appeared to be a molted skin, hanging upside-down from a stem. Curious, I was about to touch the skinwhen, to my shock, it moved! The skin quivered, as if being stroked by a small breeze, only there was none. 

Looking closer, I realized that this was not the shed skin of the green Mantis, but a second Mantis, in the process of molting. I wondered, at the time, about the green Mantis’ presence. Not yet knowing any better, I wondered: Was this her mate?

Learning the answer to this question (“No”) only bred more questions — especially this: Why didn’t she just eat the brown Mantis? 

Helpless and vulnerable, her molting sister couldn’t have been easier prey. It would have been effortless for the green one to reach over with a barbed hook and, yawn, snag the brown Mantis. Yet, she didn’t. Even more intriguing is this: If she wasn’t there to prey — as is the greatest supplication at this life stage of the Mantis — why was she there?

“Oh, the fierce beasts!” exclaimed Fabre. “They say dog does not eat dog. The Mantis has no scruples; she feasts on her fellows even when her favourite food, the cricket, is plentiful around her.” — Fabre, J. Henri, The Life of the Grasshopper , 1917, pp. 140-141.

While I acknowledge I may be projecting, there seemed to be an almost protective stance to her position. But why would she do this? I was unable to find the answer — not in the annals of Fabre, nor in more recent entomological studies. I only know that I’ve never again seen the two Mantises in such close proximity. Quite the contrary. Even before the morning of the spat, the two maintained fairly separate zones within the moonflower jungle.

My best guess is that, at that particular life stage — unlike the nymph stage, egg-laden stage, and the mating stage, all of which are prone to acts of cannibalism — there is some compulsion to preserve the species.

Alternately, there may be aspects of a Mantis’ nature, even if it’s nothing grander than the capacity for idle curiosity, that cannot be seen or measured, no matter how precisely laid the scalpel; no matter how sensitive the instrument. The tool has yet to be devised, for instance, that can quantify the existence of the human soul, much less qualify it. The same may be true of any creature on the earth. We just don’t know.

The Animal That Prays to God

The subjects of Fabre’s lab, Mantis religiosa, were known to the country folk as lou Prego-Dieu, which translates to “the animal that prays to God.” Fabre seemed somewhat amused by their naiveté on the habits of the Mantis.

Peasants are not particular about resemblances. They saw a stately-looking insect standing majestically on the sun-grilled grasses. They noticed her large delicate green wings hanging about her like a linen veil and her front feet, her hands so to speak, raised to heaven as if she prayed. That was enough for them; the thickets were peopled with prophetesses and nuns in prayer! — Fabre, J. Henri, The Life of the Grasshopper , 1917, pp. 113-114.

Humans seem to have been similarly named. The nomenclature, Homo sapiens, or ” wise man” presumes much.  While it is true that, compared to other animals, our brains allow us specific capacities for abstract reasoning, language, artistic expression and a sophisticated use of tools, the term, “wise” implies that we, as a species, have somehow been elevated from the thick-skulled constraints of Homo erectus — as if there were more than window-dressing to our ability to wear a fine pair of trousers as we march off to war.

This is some of what I’ve been pondering this summer while watching the enchanting beasts on the moonflower vine, backdropped as they were by the unfolding carnage of human warfare.  The politicians, the profiteers and their propagandists have been hard at work, issuing from their chambers and boardrooms the pious rituals of war; their pomp and circumstance always preceded in prayer, their jagged mandibles poised to pontificate and prey upon humanity.

Witnessing this has been, as Fabre wrote, “beyond the wildest dreams of the most horrible imagination. I have seen it done with my own eyes, and have not yet recovered from my astonishment.”

As centuries of recorded human thought can attest, we humans are evolved creatures. We can hardly blame our brutalities on instinct. Here, the Mantis poses a rhetorical question for us all. It could be that Homo sapiens are simply endowed with different measures of wisdom. The same may very well be true of the Mantis which, in my mind, I’ve adequately explained.

_____________________________

Epilogue: The Following Spring

There was more to the summer story of the Mantises, but I didn’t have the heart to tell it just yet. Shortly after finishing the above article, the suitors arrived. The last time we saw the green Mantis, she was with her sweetheart. The two of them had chosen, of all places, to become engaged in the middle of the tan brick wall. Lovely green Mantis, tan wall. We never saw her again. 

The brown Mantis, on the other hand,  lived out her entire natural life, which lasted through the month of September. She left behind two egg cases, each one neatly camouflaged in the mortar alleys between the brick. 

Today, a tiny being with legs not much larger than the hair on a human arm sprung into our lives. It arrived seemingly out of nowhere, within just a few feet from the old moonflower vines, and landed midway down my son-in-law’s terminal grapnel.