Devil's flower mantis
Idolomantis diabolica
— Where the name comes from
Idolomantis joins eídōlon — the image, the simulacrum, and later the idol — to mantis, the seer. Diabolica completes the picture. The name is born of the threat posture: when disturbed, the mantis rears, throws open its wings showing red, white and black bands, and raises its hooked forelegs into a stance the first describers judged demonic. It is a name given not to an animal but to a pose.
— Facts
- Group
- Insects · Insecta
- Order
- Mantises
- Habitat
- Thicket and wooded savannah, on bare branches
- Range
- East Africa, from Ethiopia to Tanzania
- Size
- 10–13 cm, among the largest mantises in the world
- Diet
- Flying insects, caught exclusively in flight
- Lifespan
- About a year
— Characteristics
- 01
At rest it mimics a dead leaf hanging from a branch.
- 02
If threatened it snaps open, showing vivid colours.
- 03
It takes only flying prey: it ignores anything that walks.
— What sets it apart
It has two appearances and neither is true. Motionless it is a dead leaf — brown, with painted veins and ragged edges — and in that state it is invisible on a branch. Touched, it transforms in a tenth of a second: it lifts its thorax and flings open wings and legs, showing a pattern of red, white, blue and black that fills the whole visual field of anything watching from close by. It is pure bluff, because it has neither venom nor weapons: it counts only on half a second of hesitation from the attacker. Biologists classify it as deimatic display, from the Greek deîma, terror.
