Praying mantises are the only insects able to swivel their heads and stare at you. Sometimes the mantises would tuck in through the bird’s breastbone, but more often they went for the head, Dr. Remsen said. Kris Okamoto, a retired nurse in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., recently came running when the young son of her house painter cried out that a praying mantis had snatched a hummingbird from her feeder. But praying mantises rise above the flattened scuttling posture that makes cockroaches look so…verminy. Praying mantises “are unusually charismatic,” said William D. Brown, who studies them at the State University of New York at Fredonia.

Source: New York Times September 22, 2017 13:07 UTC