Wasps eating the meat of a dead snake

The title of this post pretty much sums up all this photo is. Yes, these wasps have come across a dead snake and are chowing down on its yummy meat:

Found on Reddit, this picture drew some interesting commentary. One knowledge Redditor pointed out that wasps do eat meat and protein, or rather their young do:

'It's how they feed their young. The adult wasps only need flower nectar and other sugars to fuel their life processes, but the larvae need proteins to grow into adults. As such, adult wasp also hunt and scavenge for sources of protein that they don't even eat themselves. When they get back to the hive, they chew it up into meatballs and give them to the larvae one at a time. The larvae even scratch the sides of their cells to make noise to get the attention of worker wasps and say that they are hungry.'

With an attitude like that, it's no wonder most people prefer bees... If I was a wasp, I'd sure want to test the ph of that meat, maybe with an Apera Pocket Tester.

Leave a Comment bees, snake, wasp

Wasp paralyses a cicada so its larvae can eat it next week...

An excellent food storage method from a wasp

Technically this picture is not of a wasp actually eating it's prey but poisoning the cicada so that it will be paralysed. This is according to a person on Reddit where I found the picture:

"They actually don't kill the cicada or eat it themselves, they simply paralyze them indefinitely. That way the cicada stays fresh for it's larva, which will hatch and eat it alive underground three or 4 weeks from now... "

This was backed up by another chap who said:

They basically kill cicadas mid-air with their poison, then burrow the dead carcass in the ground and lay eggs in the body. The eggs hatch and eat the cicada as they mature and then break free.

Which really is nature at its finest.

Leave a Comment cicada, wasp

Is is true Praying Mantis eat each other after sex?

The Praying Mantis

The Praying Mantis has to be the coolest bug or critter on the planet I reckon. For two reasons. They are usually green and green is the coolest colour and two, the female apparently eats the male after copulations. We'll look into that in a minute but first I thought about why I'm doing a post on the Mighty Mantis!

I had a wonderful Easter lunch at a friend's where their 1 year old had a pet Praying Mantis - and whilst he was playing in the sun porch he found another. His dad put in in the jar with the original and, the excitement over we went and had lunch. 

Post chicken and potatoes we had a look at how the green-eyed monsters were playing. NOT TOO FRIENDLY! The original mantis was half way through eating his new jar mate, and in doing so proving to me that Pray Mantis do eat each other!

A colloquial name for the order is "praying mantises", because of the typical "prayer-like" stance, although the term is often misspelled as "preying mantis" since mantises are predatory

Although the praying mantis is known for its cannibalistic mating process in actuality it only occurs 5-31% of the time. Which kind makes me think those are some crap odds!


Apparently in laboratory set conditions of bright lights and confinement, the female mantis is more likely to eat the male as means of survival. A scientist once reported:


"In nature, mating usually takes place under cover, so rather than leaning over the tank studying their every move, we left them alone and videotaped what happened. We were amazed at what we saw. Out of thirty matings, we didn't record one instance of cannibalism, and instead we saw an elaborate courtship display, with both sexes performing a ritual dance, stroking each other with their antennae before finally mating.


OK so that's a little better then.


There is one species, however, the Mantis religiosa, in which it is necessary that the head be removed for the mating to take effect properly. Sexual cannibalism occurs most often if the female is hungry. But eating the head does causes the body to ejaculate faster....

The mantis has an huge appetite and some have been known to eat up to sixteen crickets a day, but this is not limited to just insects. They are well known to be carnivorous and cannibalistic, and only eat live prey in both nymph and adult stages. Praying Mantis are well known to love eating flies but hey have also been documented  as eating 21 species of insects, soft-shelled turtles, mice, frogs, birds, and delicious newts. 

Although the European mantis was introduced to the mighty United States to eat the horrible insects that destroy precious farm crops, other species are known informally as "soothsayers," "devil's horses," "mule killers," and "camel crickets" since their saliva was mistakenly thought to poison farm livestock. That was probably the Armish. I'm suggesting it was them because according to the stereotype I've gleaned from film and tv, they don't apparently have the internet so I'm in the clear. 

Not many people know that the the mantis can lash out at remarkable speed as it catches prey.  Prey items are caught and held securely with grasping, spiked forelegs. Check out this butterfly photo below:

Butterdead

Wasp being eaten by the Mantis

A fly being eaten

Fried Fly Wing for dinner

Said the grasshopper to the mantis?

Here's the classic picture of a praying mantis some how managing to hold onto a fucking bird. Maybe it was the most hungry mantis in the history of the entire species? I can respect that, it reminds me of this snake pulling up a kangaroo up a cliff. 

Bird attacked by a Praying Mantis

Leave a Comment bees, birds, bugs and critters, butterfly, fly, praying mantis, wasp