Subject: Preying Mantis: eat, prey, love
Location: South Pasadena, CA
October 11, 2014 6:49 pm
Hello Daniel. Although I have a good population of mantises and monarchs, these were unusual sights for me. Only time I’ve ever seen a mantis eat a monarch, and only the second time I’ve seen the headless mating. This was last month, within the same week, and I think the same female mantis.
Signature: Barbara
Hi Barbara,
We get numerous wonderful submissions each day, but your submission with its excellent images is one of the best we have received in quite some time. We believe these are native California Mantids, Stagmomantis californica, and you can compare your female to this image on BugGuide. The headless mating is is quite some documentation.