MANTISES & CULTURE

More than one thousand years ago the Chinese poet Lo Hung Hsien wrote: "Man, by nature, is never satisfied and resembles a snake attempting to swallow an elephant; in life, however, the praying mantis succeedes in it by devouring the cicada".

To the left: a small praying mantis figure made of jade in China more than three thousand years ago.

To the right: the praying mantis was one of the classic decorative motifs on Chinese porcelain snuff bottles made in 18th century during the reign of emperor Daoguang.

In Papua New Guinea the praying mantis is an important head-hunting symbol because of the female's habit of eating the male's head during mating.
To the left is a wooden shield collected in Central Asmat, Papua New Guinea in 1953. The human figures represented in the shield are composed of two praying mantis motifs rendered in profile and placed back to back. Small motifs on the edge of the shield are mantises and you can see one of them enlarged on the right.

Many languages have more than one way to call praying mantises. For exaple, arabs call praying mantises faras en nabi which means "horse of the profet Mohammed", but Lebanese Christians, who speak arabic too, call mantises hsan mar geris which means "horse of Saint George"

To the right is a fossil of a praying mantis found in Europe.

Below is a colour plate from Max Beier's
"Genera Insectorum, Mantodea, Fam. Mantidae,
Subfam. Hymenopodinae" published in 1934.

The plate shows a colorful selection of Hymenopodinae mantises and features some of the species mentioned in this web site, namely Orchid Mantis Hymenopus coronatus, Banded Mantis Theopropus elegans and Creobroter urbanus.