Close-up of a mantis capturing and killing a hummingbird with lightning speed

Mantises are mysterious, strange, and aggressive insects, from their appearance to their feeding habits. In addition, the mantis is also an extremely dangerous tiny assassin.

In the video, the mantis hides on a plastic plate and waits for its prey. When the hummingbird flies close, it launches its 'pair of swords' with extremely strong and sharp barbs to attack. The mantis's extremely fast attack speed helps it easily capture its prey, so fast that the human eye cannot see it.

The horse's claws clamp tightly onto the hummingbird's neck, causing its prey to quickly die. Waiting for the bird to stop struggling, the mantis slowly enjoyed its meal.

The mantis's head can turn 180 degrees with its eyes wide open and can see up to a distance of 1.5 meters to help it observe its prey. Once it has a target, it quickly approaches to capture the opponent.

With aggressive instincts, mantises are known as ruthless meat-eating machines. It will attack anything that moves, including its own kind. Although the size is not too large, mantises can still easily defeat prey many times larger than their bodies such as mice and lizards. However, the mantis' main food is smaller insects, especially pollinators like bees.

Not only good at hunting, mantises are also good at camouflage when they know how to blend their body color with the surrounding environment to hunt and hide.

Samuel Daniel

Update 02 April 2024