Barely a day goes by that my mind isn’t blown by some new thing I’ve learnt about wildlife. Either something I’ve seen or something I’ve read, or something I’ve been told about the natural world.
I’ve recently learned that White-fronted bee-eaters have family clans that fight off other clans from feeding grounds. I’ve found out that there was a penguin species (now extinct) that stood over two metres tall, and one of my new favourites is the fact that praying mantises – themselves fairly vicious creatures in that the female bites the male’s head off during mating – manoeuvre like fighter planes to avoid being eaten by bats, reacting to the bats’ echolocation and diving out the way at the last minute.
Displays of this sort are of no use to a mantis when it is flying at night, so something else has to be done to ward off the threat of bats.
For most tricks in nature, there is another trick to overcome it, and in this case, the mantises make use of a single ear found in the centre of their chest to calculate the exact moment before a bat is about to strike, and react accordingly.
Insectivorous bats hunt on the wing through echolocation; they emit a high frequency sound and are able to calculate from the echoes that bounce back to them what is ahead; they can work out how an insect is flying, its speed its direction… all the information needed to successfully pluck it out of the air.
As they approach their intended target, the frequency of their vocal emissions goes up dramatically so that they are getting almost constant information on the target. On still nights at Londolozi, you can sometimes even hear the bats hunting above you, their trilling rising to an almost imperceptible whine as another insect meets its demise. For the most part though, their echolocation takes place outside the range of human hearing.
Different uses of echolocation in bats.
Much like a submarine that will know when it is being actively pinged by sonar underwater, praying mantises when flying are able to tell when they are being echolocated by a bat.
I don’t know about the specific neurology of a praying mantis, but I imagine the information from this echolocation detection has to be lightning fast in order for the mantis to react in time. They judge to the millisecond when they are about to be gobbled, and in that instant they drop into a vertical dive to evade the bat’s searching jaws. Too early and the bat will have time to adjust its approach. Too late, and…
Apparently the mantises have become so good at judging when to power dive that they get away about 80% of the time!
Mauritian Tomb bats are insectivorous, as evidenced by a different facial and ear structure to their fruit-eating counterparts, an adaptation facilitating better echolocation.
It’s very unlikely any of us will get to see these mantid evasive manoeuvres. Spotting a flying mantis at night is hard enough, then to keep one in the spotlight long enough for a bat to come along is invariably going to be tricky. I just feel that facts like this should be shared so that more people are able to marvel at how wonderful nature is. Incredible little dramas and survival stories are happening all around us, all the time, the vast majority of which go unseen and therefore unappreciated.
But if I happen to see a mantis land one evening in the near future, then see it take off into the darkness, I’ll give it a nod and genuinely wish it luck. But with an 80% success rate, it’s probably not going to need it…
Interesting blog.
Such an interesting and informative article. Thank you!
James, I loved all the photos, especially bat
Have to admit bats creep me out altho I know they are necessary to the balance of power in the controlling of insects. Wow didn’t know mantis were so agile in the air. Victoria
This is so fascinating! Akin to dolphins’ echolocation.
James, This is just one more piece of the incredible education about wildlife that you and your team continue to provide. The technology built into the different species continues to amaze us. Thanks!
What an incredible story and full of interesting insight in the life of a mantis. They are surely very agile, fast and fierce fighters. The way you explained how they drop down just before the bats eat them is very interesting and clever. Thanks James.
Really, nature is amazing. What a marvelous combat between bat and mantis.
That was very interesting including the 2 metre tall penguin (now extinct)
How amazing is that! Survival can be a complex business!
James,
Interesting article and excellent photos of the mantis.
I know a little about the subject having been a fast jet fighter pilot and also specialising in electronic warfare – that part of countermeasures against enemy aircraft radar but more critically, enemy radar controlled air-to air or ground to air missiles. The active countermeasures involved counter radar emmissions and the passive countermeasures involve flight tactics. As countermeasures improved, so did the enemy radars improved and that cycle contnues to this day – and I say this for a reason.
We had study material of bats inside a large hangar, with sets of rope nets hanging down from the ceiling down to floor level. There were bats and moths inside the hangar. There were high rate infra-red video made of their dynamics. The size of the nets’ grid was such that a bat’s wings would just fit in there. Over time the nets were replaced with ever thinner ropes, then twine, and in the end piano wire was used. Never did a bat fly into even the piano wire.
Some moths – not all – had evolved the flight maneuvre as you describe in the article – namely a last ditch dive at just the correct moment. The principle for the dive is that the bat’s infrasonic pulse goes out in a horisontally polarised pattern – meaning it is wide horisontally and thin vertically. Imagine the design of that speaker system to achieve that pattern – if you would consider the normal propagation of sound waves through the air.
So the moth (mantis) knows the sound pulse is vertically thin and wide horisontally but also that it expands in diameter further from the emitter – if it plunges too soon there will be a perceptible echo disturbance and the bat will follow him. So moths evolved to have the fine hearing resolution to identify the rapid increase in the pulse repetition frequency and dive down at that precise moment to get out of the narrower pulse shape nearer the emitter.
Then came the counter-counter measure: bats, when the echo was lost at the last moment had developed a way of measuring the very last few of the pulse returns and dove down into an intercepting dive and not a ballistic following, and the moth reappeared as an echo in its receptor in time to be grabbed.
Nature is immensely ahead of us humans and then we are so arrogant to proclaim ourselves as being the crown of creation.
The smaller the insects the more sophisticated are their abilities. Read all you can about termites – and I mean all – including its digestive tract and what lives inside there and you will stay awake for nighs contemplating that the solution for mankind to stop all conflict is right there.
Regards
Dries
Nature is a continuous marvel – there is something to be appreciated and learned every day!
So cool James! I tried to find a video of a mantis escaping a bat, and found this cool video about mantis mating here in California!
https://youtu.be/NHf47gI8w04
An interesting blog James. We all tend to want to see the big things in our surroundings, but sometimes it’s the little things that are also fascinating. I would not wish to be a male mantis thank you very much. Thanks for sharing with us, I enjoyed reading it. Be well and stay safe.
Very, very interesting James! I am not a great fan of mantids but it always amazes me that most animals – both predators and prey – are given attributes by our Creator to both succeed in catching something as a predator, and to escape being caught as prey. It evens things out considerably. Levels the playing field. Wendy M
Wow that’s incredible. Who would have thought of jets and subs when looking at a mantis. The cutest insect to me is the baby praying mantis when it’s just hatched out. There cuteness does hide their slightly darker side though…
Really interesting James, please carry on sharing!
Just love these interesting snippets James. It reminds me of a trip we did to the Tsingy Bemaraha reserve in Madagascar some years ago. We camped out in tents and as the sun set the sky would be blackened by thousands of bats as they came out to feed. The sound was awesome. Almost like a Boeing passing low overhead! We witnessed a Cicada killer wasp take down a HUGE Cicada on the ground It attempted to take off but couldn’t manage. So she scaled a tree, dragging her catch..went to the end of a branch and jumped off. This helped her gain enough height to fly off towards her nest. Now you can’t tell me that doesn’t take some reasoning to work out a plan. So impressive 🙏😊
Excellent post! Mantis are little creepy creatures that in their cosmos look giants like orcas in the sea or lions on earth… please keep posting on insects they are intriguing
I really enjoyed this blog- new information!