OMAHA, Neb. (KMTV) — Today's visit to Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo & Aquarium takes us to the Berniece Grewcock Butterfly & Insect Pavilion to meet one of the largest mantis species in the world. We get to see several of them at different stages in life.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
It's a type of insect you have most likely seen before
“There’s a few mantis species in the US, but there’s a lot more diversity in tropical locations, like Asia for example,” Lead Keeper of Terrestrial Invertebrates Krisitn Rodenburg said.
And that’s where these guys are from.
“Today we’re looking at giant Asian mantis.”
Rodenburg had several to show us.
“This is what an adult male looks like," she said. “The males as an adult are a lot skinnier than a females, and their wings extend past the abdomen.”
“They usually have longer antennas as well.”
“This is the female. As you can see they’re a lot wider.
Noticing the difference is important – so the zoo can match them up to breed.
“If they aren’t adults yet, the way to tell male and female apart is to look at the underside of their abdomen and count the segments. So the males will have eight and the female will have six.”
“Here we have a juvenile male. So you can see, he’s probably one or two molts away from being a full adult, but he’s not yet because he doesn’t have those full wings.”
“This one is about a month old.”
The month old is just mature enough to tell it is a male – unlike this one:
“Okay, this is the teeny tiny baby.”
“This one is two weeks old. So I had two recent hatchings.”
“They are very, very capable predators. They can eat prey much bigger than them," Rodenburg said. “They’re really good pest control for your garden.”
We tried to feed one of the females:
“Nope, she doesn’t want it,” Rodenburg laughed.
Even when they are taking it easy -- you can just sit back and marvel at this one of a kind insect
“They’re the only insect that can turn their head 180 degrees like us.”
She added, “After a while if they’re sitting on your arm, they start to clean themselves like a cat, which is really, really cool and fun to watch.”
You can check out the giant Asian mantis for yourself – at the Butterfly and Insect Pavilion.
