Praying mantises are a large, well-studied group of insects found on nearly every continent. Early civilizations\u2014including ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, and Assyria\u2014even believed they possessed supernatural powers. In modern culture, they are often seen as the ultimate “femme fatale” because the females are much larger and stronger than the males, and sometimes consume them after mating. I encountered this enormous (4\u20135 cm) praying mantis while visiting friends in a Beja village in Tunisia. Because of her incredible camouflage, I only spotted her when she moved. I tried to take a few more photos, but they didn\u2019t turn out very well in the harsh, sunny weather.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Praying mantises are a large, well-studied group of insects found on nearly every continent. Early civilizations\u2014including ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[],"countries":[79,80],"order-category":[600,606],"class_list":["post-3706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-predators","countries-africa","countries-tunisia","order-category-insects-mantises","order-category-mantises-praying-mantises"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/bugs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/bugs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/bugs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/bugs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/bugs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/bugs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3708,"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/bugs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3706\/revisions\/3708"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/bugs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/bugs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/bugs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/bugs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3706"},{"taxonomy":"countries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/bugs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/countries?post=3706"},{"taxonomy":"order-category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pawel.stefanoff.pl\/bugs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/order-category?post=3706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}