It was such a startling experience to find this Carolina Mantis stranded on a branch sticking out of the water twenty feet from shore. She swayed side to side in that typical mantis way, trying to get a better depth perception on objects around her. I started taking her picture with my closeup camera, but the LED light must have attracted her (or maybe she was sick of her branch). Either way, she’d soon jumped aboard!
I put down the mantis-claimed camera, picked up another…and the mantis made her way from the front of the boat to my paddle then walked directly up that until she was staring straight at me. If she were a cat, that would have been a Subtle HintTM that she wanted to go ashore. So I poled those twenty feet as best I could, keeping her part of the paddle dry.
As soon as land appeared, she jumped into a tree and was gone.
You’ll notice I said “she” — the short wings are a dead giveaway that the mantis I found was female. And those same short wings mean female Carolina mantises can’t fly once they reach this stage of their lives.
So maybe she really did want to be taken ashore?
I’ve often wondered if I’d know a Carolina Mantis isn’t the more common, invasive Chinese Mantis when I finally stumbled across the native. While I’ve seen a few immatures that I wasn’t able to distinguish, the moment I saw this adult I was positive she was something new.
In addition to the short wings on the female, one feature to look for in both sexes of the Carolina Mantis is the dark spot in the middle of those wings. The species also tends to be smaller than the Chinese Mantis, although my female’s presence was strong enough that I didn’t really notice that in the field.
One thing I got wrong: the beautiful patterning on this mantis isn’t quite as diagnostic as I’d at first assumed. Instead, mantises match the coloration of their surroundings each time they molt. Clearly this one molted atop a twig.
The fourteen minutes I spent with that female felt like a once-in-a-lifetime experience…then the next day I saw two more Carolina Mantises (including a male who seemed to be stealing from a spiderweb). Turns out this is breeding season and mantids are particularly visible right now — go out and look!