WEBVTT - BrainStuff Classics: Do Female Praying Mantises Really Decapitate Mates?

0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:06.400
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey

0:00:06.440 --> 0:00:09.240
<v Speaker 1>brain Stuff, Lauren vogle bum here with a classic episode

0:00:09.240 --> 0:00:12.920
<v Speaker 1>from our podcast archives. There are a lot of myths

0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:16.319
<v Speaker 1>out there about animal behavior that stem from assumptions that

0:00:16.360 --> 0:00:18.919
<v Speaker 1>people made in the past, either out in the world

0:00:19.160 --> 0:00:22.840
<v Speaker 1>or in the science lab. So how does the tail

0:00:23.000 --> 0:00:26.320
<v Speaker 1>that female praying mantis is decapitate their mates hold up?

0:00:26.840 --> 0:00:29.000
<v Speaker 1>It was the premise of an episode in season one

0:00:29.000 --> 0:00:34.080
<v Speaker 1>of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, So it must be true, right, Hi,

0:00:34.200 --> 0:00:37.000
<v Speaker 1>brain Stuff, Lauren vogle bam here. It's long been an

0:00:37.040 --> 0:00:40.000
<v Speaker 1>excitedly repeated myth that female praying mantis is have no

0:00:40.159 --> 0:00:43.800
<v Speaker 1>problem engaging in violent, cannibalistic murder when confronted with a

0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:47.839
<v Speaker 1>friendly mate, perhaps because school classrooms often host terrariums with

0:00:47.880 --> 0:00:50.520
<v Speaker 1>mantis subjects. It's one of those rumors that even children

0:00:50.600 --> 0:00:53.000
<v Speaker 1>seem to know. Don't breed with a female mantis lest

0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:56.240
<v Speaker 1>your head becomes her dinner. Sounds scary, but is it

0:00:56.280 --> 0:00:59.000
<v Speaker 1>true to the females of the species actually eat or

0:00:59.000 --> 0:01:02.040
<v Speaker 1>decapitate their mate, or are they simply being maligned by

0:01:02.200 --> 0:01:05.120
<v Speaker 1>alarmed men who perhaps empathize a little too much with

0:01:05.160 --> 0:01:08.440
<v Speaker 1>their insect brethren. The key to understanding these questions is

0:01:08.480 --> 0:01:11.319
<v Speaker 1>the word species, because while we might have a picture

0:01:11.360 --> 0:01:13.880
<v Speaker 1>of a standard looking green mantis in our head, there

0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:16.720
<v Speaker 1>are actually two thousand, four hundred species of the sucker.

0:01:17.080 --> 0:01:20.160
<v Speaker 1>Some are colorful, some are creepy, and some, yes, some

0:01:20.440 --> 0:01:23.880
<v Speaker 1>are cannibals. But before we get into the occasionally cruel

0:01:23.920 --> 0:01:26.560
<v Speaker 1>lifestyle of the female mantis, let's take a second to

0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:30.640
<v Speaker 1>examine the basis of the naybe myth. What we discover

0:01:30.760 --> 0:01:33.400
<v Speaker 1>is that the myth is rooted in well documented science.

0:01:33.760 --> 0:01:36.720
<v Speaker 1>In an eight eight six observation from the journal Science,

0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:40.840
<v Speaker 1>entomologist Leland Assian Howard noted that on placing a male

0:01:40.880 --> 0:01:44.119
<v Speaker 1>mantis with a female, the female systematically proceeded to eat

0:01:44.160 --> 0:01:47.000
<v Speaker 1>the male's left leg, left eye, and right leg, and

0:01:47.120 --> 0:01:50.440
<v Speaker 1>then decapitate him and eat his head. The male, keep

0:01:50.440 --> 0:01:52.840
<v Speaker 1>in mind, was attempting to mate with her the whole time,

0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:56.440
<v Speaker 1>which she eventually acquiesced to with her headless and mostly

0:01:56.520 --> 0:01:59.520
<v Speaker 1>legless partner. While Howard stressed that he had never seen

0:01:59.520 --> 0:02:03.040
<v Speaker 1>it before, he also rather breathlessly stated, it seems to

0:02:03.080 --> 0:02:05.800
<v Speaker 1>be only by accident that a male ever escapes alive

0:02:05.840 --> 0:02:09.400
<v Speaker 1>from the embraces of his partner. We see how this

0:02:09.400 --> 0:02:11.840
<v Speaker 1>could make everyone think that mantis ladies were nothing but

0:02:11.840 --> 0:02:15.839
<v Speaker 1>bloodthirsty harpies. But remember Howard saw this once with one

0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:20.240
<v Speaker 1>species of mantis, Mantis Carolina. Decapitation or cannibalism went on

0:02:20.280 --> 0:02:22.920
<v Speaker 1>to be observed in Mantis religiosa as well, and a

0:02:22.960 --> 0:02:26.200
<v Speaker 1>few other scientists studied the question of why decapitation would

0:02:26.200 --> 0:02:29.919
<v Speaker 1>be useful for mating. Some theories the decapitation might cause

0:02:29.960 --> 0:02:32.519
<v Speaker 1>sexual movements in the male abdomen, or perhaps part of

0:02:32.520 --> 0:02:36.239
<v Speaker 1>the thorax might actually inhibit sexual movements. Both theories were

0:02:36.320 --> 0:02:39.840
<v Speaker 1>later proved false. So here's the real deal. Female mantises

0:02:39.919 --> 0:02:43.480
<v Speaker 1>have occasionally been observed to cannibalize and decapitate their mates,

0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:45.840
<v Speaker 1>but by and large doesn't seem to be the case.

0:02:46.240 --> 0:02:49.720
<v Speaker 1>A study in animal behavior made it forty pairs of

0:02:49.720 --> 0:02:53.640
<v Speaker 1>mantis is only one was decapitated in almost seventy encounters.

0:02:54.160 --> 0:02:57.600
<v Speaker 1>Bottom line, you can stop with the cliche female mantis jokes.

0:02:57.840 --> 0:03:00.400
<v Speaker 1>Dating is hard enough. Nobody needs a reputation as a

0:03:00.400 --> 0:03:09.360
<v Speaker 1>man eator. Today's episode was written by Kate Kirshner and

0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:12.280
<v Speaker 1>produced by Tristan McNeil and Tyler Klang. For more on

0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:14.880
<v Speaker 1>this and lots of other curious topics, visit how stuffworks

0:03:14.880 --> 0:03:17.880
<v Speaker 1>dot com. Brainstuff is production of I heart Radio. For

0:03:18.080 --> 0:03:20.880
<v Speaker 1>more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the our heart Radio app,

0:03:20.960 --> 0:03:23.760
<v Speaker 1>Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,