What kind of mantis is it?
It has a white to pale pink body and petal-wide legs. It doesn't imitate a particular orchid; it looks like "flowers in general."
Because of its name it's often said to live on orchids, but that isn't true. A 2016 study concluded it has no close association with orchids or any particular flower and looks like a flower while sitting on green leaves.
How to identify it
- The femurs of the legs are widened and rounded like petals.
- Females are about 6 cm and males about 3 cm, a very large difference.
- First-instar nymphs are red and black, and from the 2nd instar they turn white and pink.
Size comparison
Body length runs from the head to the tip of the abdomen, using the maximum of the larger sex. The bars only show relative size, so they don't match real size on screen.
Look-alikes
- Middle and hind femurs wide like petals
- White and pink body mimics an orchid flower
- Broad white band across the forewings
- Orange hindwings
Versus the banded flower mantis: the banded flower mantis is also a flower mantis in which the female is much bigger than the male, but it has a green body with white crossbands.
Range
It lives in tropical rainforest in Southeast Asia. It stays on green leaves rather than inside flowers and waits for pollinators like bees to come to it.
Behavior
It is an ambush hunter that eats the bees and flies that come close.
In a field experiment in Malaysia, a single orchid mantis attracted more pollinating insects than the real flowers around it. Through a bee's eyes, the mantis's color couldn't be told apart from the surrounding flowers. It was the first time this hunting method, mimicking a flower to lure prey, was confirmed experimentally in an animal.
Fun facts
- One study suggests that females are much bigger than males not to lay more eggs, but to catch large pollinators. The small male moves well, which helps in finding a mate.
- Some say first-instar nymphs resemble venomous assassin bug nymphs, but this hasn't been confirmed by experiment.
Body length is based on Korean secondary sources.