A European Mantis (Mantis religiosa) that has captured and begun feeding on a domestic cricket (Acheta domesticus)
Mantid meets cricket, with predictable results…
Today’s blog features more photos of the praying mantis that I wrote about in my last blog (How many clerks does it take to sell a praying mantis?). I hadn’t kept a mantid for many years and had forgotten just how interesting they are. It is fascinating how incredibly efficient and fast they are at consuming a good sized insect.
These photos were all taken using the white box apparatus and technique that I have described previously (How to: white box photography of Macleay’s spectre stick insects Extatosoma tiaratum). When I first placed her inside the white box she was nervous and looking to escape. But as soon as she saw the cricket she became entirely focused on the prey. Once she started feeding she was completely oblivious to me and I was able to get the lens as close as I wanted with no reaction from her at all.
I took these pictures with the lens aperture stopped all the way to F22. I knew that by stopping the lens down I would lose some image resolution, but I felt that the need for maximum depth of field was more important for this series of photos.
There really isn’t much more to say…except that if you are squeamish about bug guts you might want to be cautious about looking at the pictures below. If not, then enjoy! The mantid certainly did…
Cheers,
EC
The technical stuff:
Camera: Olympus E-620 digital SLR
Lens: Zuiko 35mm macro
Settings: manual exposure (F12 @ 1/125 sec)
Lighting: Vivitar 283 flash and VP-1 Vari-power adapter (1/4 power)
ISO: 100
Clearly a very ambitious mantid: always wanting to get a head…
(sorry, couldn’t resist)
macrocritters 
Those photos were soooooo close, that it was a bit difficult to look at what was going on. Great photos, but aaaaaacccckkkk! 🙂
LOL! I love to get an emotional response to my photos, even if it is a yuck!!! : )
It’s not really a “yuck”…it’s really just an aaaaccckkk, because it was all so real and I was looking at it. 🙂 You take great photos, I already know that.
Absolutely amazing. It looks like the mantis had one eye on you the whole time.
awesome!
I really like these photos, not just for the quality, but also to see the whole feeding process – such a specific procedure that it seems to be following. Thanks for sharing!
I’ve always like the stare of a praying mantis and it’s triangular head. Great shots!!
Just breathtaking! It is another world!