Australian Mantodea with yellow/red eyes?
February 11, 2010
This Praying Mantis (?) was hovering around me this morning, and then it landed close to me on our outside deck in Sydney. We see a lot of them here, but this one had such peculiar red striped eyes on yellow, with little black spots, as in an eye in an eye. I tried to find one like it on Brisbaneinsects website, with now luck. Any ideas?
Ridou Ridou
Sydney, Australia
Hi again Ridou,
This presented a bit of a challenge for us, but we are satisfied that we have identified your delicate green mantis as a Snake Mantid, Kongobatha diademata, but alas, though we have a name, and we know that the Snake Mantid is found in Australia, we were unable to locate any additional information.
We found a matching image on the Life Unseen website, and the aerial view nicely illustrates the yellow stripe on the thorax also found in your image. We located a second photo with no accompanying data on a site called Members Optusnet, and that image illustrates eyes similar to those in your photos.
