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California Mantis

Stagmomantis californica

Description:

Long, slender insect with green and grey markings. Red on face and legs. Mantis qualify for Wildlife with Super Senses because: "the articulation of the head is also remarkably flexible, permitting nearly 300 degrees of movement in some species, allowing for a great range of vision (their compound eyes may contain up to 10,000 ommatidia and have a large binocular field of vision). The dark spot on each eye is a pseudopupil. As their hunting relies heavily on vision, they are primarily diurnal, but many species will fly at night, especially males in search of less-mobile females whom they can detect through pheromones. Flying at night allows these males to avoid many diurnal bird predators, and many mantises also have an auditory thoracic organ that assists them as they attempt to avoid capture by bats by detecting the presence of the bat's echolocation sounds and responding evasively." - Wikipedia

Habitat:

Hollywood juniper tree in backyard

Notes:

It was so curious, it even climbed on my hands and lens as shown in this series. I originally had this video with a different Mantis spotting because I thought we could only have one spotting for each species. This is the series of mantis that I took the video of.

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7 Comments

Sachin Zaveri
Sachin Zaveri 12 years ago

Seems Happy Mantis

Hema  Shah
Hema Shah 12 years ago

There are flat shelled snails too. So maybe its the species.i am looking forward to snail spottings from you!

CindyBinghamKeiser
CindyBinghamKeiser 12 years ago

Nice! I don't think we have much of a variety of snails although my recent spotting may be different than the usual one's we have. Either that or the shell grew flat because it lives under a rock :)

Hema  Shah
Hema Shah 12 years ago

praying Mantis are great and lately I am getting interested in snails too!We have such a variety here. just discovered that i have escargots walking all over because of the limestone.

CindyBinghamKeiser
CindyBinghamKeiser 12 years ago

Thank you Emma and textless. They have such great personalities!

textless
textless 12 years ago

Excellent series!

Hema  Shah
Hema Shah 12 years ago

what a beauty!

Escondido, California, USA

Spotted on Aug 26, 2011
Submitted on Nov 6, 2011

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California Mantis Stagmomantis Mantis California (Praying) Mantis

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