Me vs. Praying Mantids

There are martial arts moves that were modeled after the moves that a praying mantis makes.  The story goes that a monk named Wang Lung was bothered by the sound of a mantis striking a cricket.  He then observed the mantis (and had a little fight with him) and subsequently developed some pretty nasty moves. The mantis is a master at combat apparently.

A couple of guys named Sam and Si produced a video measuring the strike time for a praying mantis vs. the strike time for a human.  They filmed a few different species of praying mantids striking at prey and then calculated the number of seconds it took.  Here are the results:

Polyspilota griffinii - 0.039 sec
Alalomantis muta - 0.057 sec
Phyllocrania paradoxa - 0.027 sec

Then they tried a young, fit human striking with a similar pose.  His time was .0805, much slower.

You can see the video here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cch4aE3Oon0

Run!!!

What are you looking at?

This explains the difficultly I have been having in caring for 30 baby mantids that recently hatched in my house.  They are each separated into their own Safeway deli containers.  Each day I have to pry off the lid, making a careful note of where the mantis is in the container, usually upside down on the lid, and get a couple of fruit flies in there, and a small spritz of water, and get the container closed again before the mantis either runs up my arm or jumps to potential freedom and makes off down the hallway.  They are only about centimeter long right now, but they seem to be able to jump straight up at least a foot.  And the second they sense the container is open, they start trying to escape.  Of course, so do the fruit flies.  The fruit flies have the advantage that I care more about the mantids escaping then I do about them escaping.  After all, there are a few stray spiders around that can take care of the fruit flies later.

I can attest to what the youtube video addresses, the mantids are faster than I am (and possibly smarter too).