He encountered a four-foot praying-mantis that raised its saw-toothed forelimbs and waited immobile for him to come within reach.
Once he came upon that extraordinary egg-container of the mantis tribe: a gigantic leaf-shaped mass of solidified foam, whipped out of some special plastic compound which the mantis secretes, and in which the eggs are laid.
To the rest, the discovery of one partly mature praying mantis meant that there would be hundreds of others.
The smell of a praying-mantis was acrid, and all beetles reeked of decay.
Once they saw a great praying-mantis a good half-mile off, and again they deviated from their proper route.
Poised upright in its spectral attitude, the mantis was literally flung backward.
Whether the Bushmen and the Hottentots worship the mantis (the Bushman god Cagn) as animal is not quite clear.
The gigantic female spider and the tiny male fertiliser, the Mantis insect with its similarly large and ferocious female, bees, and mosquitoes,” all are pressed into the service.
This applies to most of the lower forms of life in which the differentiation of sex obtains, and in many insects, the Mantis being one of the cases specially insisted upon by our author.
In the eyes of the Languedoc peasants the Mantis religiosa is almost sacred.
It is represented with the Mantis religiosa in Fig.
The Mantis oratoria, rather smaller, is less commonly met with.
There is another Gaunab, the mantis insect, which is worshipped by Hottentots and Bushmen (p.
The Mantis gets his adopted daughter to call the swallower to his aid; but Kwai Hemm swallows the Mantis, the god-insect.
The chief divine character in Bushman myth is the Mantis insect.
Kolb, the old Dutch traveller, found that the Hottentots, like the Bushmen, revered the mantis insect.
And the giant praying mantis remained placidly and invulnerably still.
The mantis closed its arm-like forelegs upon it, holding it as if piously and benignly contemplating it.
A third species, Mantis oratoria, is also common but somewhat smaller in size.
Two species, Mantis pauperata and Mantis religosa, measure about two or two and a half inches in length.
The Mantis is a species of cricket, and belongs to the Hemiptetera, or second order of insects.
We are persuaded that our readers will be delighted with these attractive facts in the history of the Mantis and Starfish.
The country people in many parts of the continent, look upon the religious Mantis as a divine insect, and would not on any account injure it.
A monkish legend tells us that Saint Francis Xavier, having perceived a mantis holding its legs toward heaven, ordered it to sing the praises of God, when immediately the insect struck up one of the most exemplary of canticles!
Suddenly, during a long pause, a little mantis appeared on the scene.
Fabre declares that "the mantis is alone among all the insects in directing its attention to inanimate things.
The female mantis goes a step farther than this, for she begins eating her lover even before the courtship is over.
The Mantis religiosa is described by Fabre as contemplating the female for a long time in an attitude of ecstasy.
In South America is found a huge mantis so powerful that it captures birds by grasping them in its terrible claws.
In Java a beautiful pink mantis is so perfect in its mimicry of a pink orchid that insects alight upon it and are caught.
A Philippine Island mantis is remarkable for its resemblance to a dried and withered leaf.
A mantis will continue a combat even when part of its body is cut away.
The odd-shaped little creature, which is the mantis shrimp in one of its stages, is brilliantly luminous, not over its entire body, but in the eyestalks.
One of the most beautiful of all the crustaceans, in my estimation, is the mantis shrimp, or Squilla (Fig.
And one sees the mantisgnawing the belly of the philanthe while the philanthe continues sucking the bee's belly.
The mantis who eats her husband is an excellent egg-layer who prepares, passionately, the future of her progeny.
If the spermatophagy of the dectic is useless, if the murder of the male mantis is useless, it will annul the foregoing reflections, and others will rise.
But at the entrance of the nest a mantis is waiting, its double-saw of an arm is unfolded, the philanthe is nipped in passing.
It is not the ferocity of the she-spider which demands the sexual habit; the femalemantis is still more savage, and mantis' method is cavalage.
It is his destiny, and he feels it coming, at least the male spider does, and the male mantis allows himself to be gnawed with a perfect stoicism.
And the mantis is so voracious that you can cut her in two without making her let go; a chain, truly, of carnage.
The mantis is almost the only insect with a neck; the head does not join the thorax immediately, the neck is long and flexible, bending in all directions.
True to her role of protege the female can not throw this bluff, which is used by Chinese warriors, by certain insects like the mantis and by the cobra among serpents.
When a pair of mantis were put together in a glass they fought viciously, the fight ending with the decapitation of the male and his being eaten by the female.
This peculiarity of the mantis seems not to have been observed before, though their mutually destructive disposition has been noted by several.
Though plentifully supplied with flies, the young mantis fought each other constantly, the stronger devouring the weaker, until but one was left.
I have been told that the leaf-like expansions of the abdomen and thighs of a certain Brazilian Mantis turn from green to yellow as autumn advances, together with the leaves of the plants among which it seeks for its prey.
One of the most striking of these is the curious "praying insect" (Mantis religiosa).
And, what is more extraordinary, the headless trunk of a male Mantis has been known to unite itself to the other sex[84].
Mantis fausta, though not as some suppose worshiped by the Hottentots, is yet greatly esteemed by them, and they regard the person upon whom it alights as highly fortunate[507].
Pharos and Mantis held sway, and I dared not look round for fear of my ancestors being there to see me in the Emperor's uniform!
Mantis was there, subterraneously scornful of her unwilling rival; and the rogue Pharos himself, with his oily glibness, his cheap mystery, and his professional jargon.
She has got hold of an entirely new prophetess, a certain woman who calls herself Madame Mantis and knows all the secrets of the future, both this side the grave and the other.
Says he can work spells with it; and his precious partner Mantis kisses it (Italics are Sophy's) whenever she meets him.
Mantis was installed medium now--and the revelations came.
I have no time to be bored," said Annette, "even if there is no mantis and no lizard.
And the mantis suddenly sat up and appeared to engage in prayer.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "mantis" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
