The granddaughter of property owner in Magna Bay, Shuswap with two praying mantis on her.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Laura White
August 20, 2023 - 7:00 AM
A woman in the Shuswap had two strange alien-looking critters on her property in the Shuswap a couple of days ago.
Laura White was able to observe two praying mantises along with her granddaughter for about a day and a half before they disappeared. Last year summer she saw one mantis, the first she's seen, and this year she had a pair visit.
“We spotted the first one and it stayed put overnight and the next morning there were two,” she said. “They stayed for about a day and a half. They kept crawling all over my granddaughter, we don’t know why, maybe attracted to body heat.”
The mantids were aggressive with each other so White separated them to either side of the property and they soon disappeared but not before she got some photos of the little alien pair, and a video of the bigger one thumping the smaller one on the head.
"My guess is that they were the same sex and that's why they were fighting," White said. "I don't know how to tell the difference between males and females except one had a black mark on its arm and one didn't and one was smaller."
Stuart Brown is the owner at Lake Country’s pets and exotics.
He said European mantids are common and are most commonly seen this time of year when they mature and get their wings. They start pairing up and are notorious for eating their mates.
“The females typically eat the males after mating, and a pair of males will also have territorial disputes," he said.
Identifying the sex of a mantid is difficult because size and colour doesn’t mean anything but the mantids with larger abdomens are usually females. The insects only survive one season. In September they start laying egg cases and die off. The egg cases over winter and in April will hatch out hundreds of babies.
Brown said the praying mantis is “an intelligent bug.”
“They have binocular vision for almost 360 degrees,” he said. “They’re incredible little structures of nature, they plan and map out the easiest and most stealthy ways to get to prey items without being seen.”
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When asked why they would be crawling on a little girls hands and arms, Brown said the girl may have been a structure to climb on or the insects were curious about her, but they are typically not attracted to humans. The bugs are not dangerous to humans unless they are threatened.
“Not unless you’re a bug or another mantid,” Brown said. “They’re non venomous and typically shy but will put on a bit of a display flashing eye spots on the undersides of their arms as a confusion tactic. You can get pinched by their spring-like arms that are fairly sharp.”
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Brown said the mantids are an invasive species common to the BC Interior that were introduced from Europe in the 1960s for pest control. There is a native species of mantid in the southern Okanagan that is small and brown called a minor ground mantis that are almost extinct because the European mantids wiped them out. They are closely related to cockroaches.
A pair of praying mantis on a property in Magna Bay, Shuswap.
Image Credit: SUBMITTED/ Laura White
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