The Female Praying Mantis Was Framed!
LatestBug lovers will recall that the female praying mantis cannibalizes the head of her sexual partner upon mating. Turns out this may not entirely accurate.
Wrote Leland Ossian Howard in Science (1886):
Placing them in the same jar, the male, in alarm, endeavoured to escape. In a few minutes the female succeeded in grasping him. She first bit off his front tarsus, and consumed the tibia and femur. Next she gnawed out his left eye… it seems to be only by accident that a male ever escapes alive from the embraces of his partner.
The idea that the female mantis is a femme fatale has resonated in U.S. culture, a culture that loves to recount how human women kill the spirits of their male mates; a culture that, as Twisty Faster puts it, “…will unfairly characterize females as villains whenever possible.”
Case in point, the praying mantis cartoon: