What kind of mantis is it?
Individuals range from bright green to dull brown. It's sturdy and tolerant of changing conditions, so insect keepers around the world commonly raise it.
Wikipedia gives West Africa as its origin and says the Spanish and Israeli populations were introduced by people, but the 2014 paper on the first Portuguese record said "it lives mainly south of the Sahara, and also has native populations on the Mediterranean coast." This page follows the paper's description.
How to identify it
- There's a white spot on the forewing.
- The inside of the front legs is yellowish.
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
- White spot on the forewing
- Yellowish inside of the front legs
- White spot on the forewing (dark rim)
- 2 purple bands across the underside of the thorax
- Broad, thick abdomen
- 2–5 large, round yellow spines on the front coxa
Versus the giant Asian mantis: Korea's giant Asian mantis also has a white spot on the forewing, but its pronotum is short and thick and its abdomen is broad.
Range
It lives in warm places like bushes and grassland, and in Europe it is also found around human settlements.
Behavior
An aggressive ambush hunter that catches insects as big as itself.
Fun facts
- It is spreading to Mediterranean islands such as the Balearics, Sardinia, and Sicily, and to Portugal and Greece, and tourists and cargo movement seem to have helped it spread.