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Updated: May 4, 2025
Take, on the other hand, the well-known case of that predaceous mantis which exactly imitates the white ants, and, mixing with them like one of their own horde, quietly devours a stray fat termite or so, from time to time, as occasion offers.
The peasant confuses them. When, in spring, he meets the mitred insect, he thinks he sees the common Prego-Dieu, who is a daughter of the autumn. Similar forms would seem to indicate similarity of habits. In fact, led away by the extraordinary armour, we should be tempted to attribute to the Empusa a mode of life even more atrocious than that of the Mantis.
Now, such stories of divine feats of swallowing and disgorging are very common, I show, in savage myth and popular Marchen. The bushmen have Kwai Hemm, who swallows the sacred Mantis insect. He is killed, and all the creatures whom he has swallowed return to light. Such stories occur among Australians, Kaffirs, Red Men, in Guiana, in Greenland, and so on. In some cases, among savages.
'What is he doing? asked the girl. At the same moment Kalus heard a loosened stone sent plummeting to the bottom of the canyon. Its dry echo sounded sharp and clear below. 'Sylviana, listen to me carefully. He spoke firmly, moving closer. 'The mantis is coming toward us. Do not cry out -he probably won't hurt us. But you must do everything I say without questions.
Every instinct and emotion he possessed told him not leave her. But the Mantis..... He had no way of knowing that even now the question was being rendered academic. Hearing Akar's deep growl, followed by a scream, he rushed wildly back toward the frontal chamber. Fearing the worst he drew out his crude stone knife.
The mantis flew down on the ox-hide and proceeded to crawl over it, taking little flights from one corner to another; and whenever it thought itself menaced it assumed an attitude of seeming devotion and real defiance. Soon it lit in front of Cartucho's nose.
This air, which gives the nest a volume very much greater than that of the abdomen of the Mantis, evidently does not issue from the insect although the foam appears at the orifice of the genital organs; it is borrowed from the atmosphere. The Mantis builds more especially with air, which is eminently adapted to protect the nest against changes of temperature.
This one hunts the Locust and nothing else; that one the Mantis and the Empusa. Yet another is addicted to the Grey Worm and another to the Looper. Fools! How great was your mistake in allowing the wise eclecticism of your ancestress, whose relics now repose in the hard mud of some lacustrian stratum, to become obsolete! How much better would things be for you and yours!
'What is he saying? asked the girl. 'The Mantis wishes to speak to me. I hope that is good. Wait for me here, I will return as soon as it is safe. Feeling terribly small and exposed Kalus began to descend, running quickly through his mind all the things he wanted to say, while trying to muster the courage to say them.
Vainly the captive struggles; his mandibles chew the air, his desperate kicks meet with no resistance. He has met with his fate. The Mantis refolds her wings, the standard of battle; she resumes her normal pose, and the meal commences.
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