I Taught My Praying Mantis to Fish (yes, really)

I wanted to know if my praying mantis could catch a fish. These things are terrifying hunters. Every single thing I drop in front of them disappears instantly. And in the wild, mantises are known to hunt fish on occasion. It can be part of a naturally varied diet. So I set up a test. Could a mantis raised in captivity that's never seen water in its life pull off a hunt like that? I wanted to find out. So I set up four escalating challenges to see how or if a mantis naturally adapts its hunting strategy to new prey. Eventually we'd see if could catch something in water. So I hopped online and tried to find a giant Chinese mantis for sale. Look how crazy this thing is. I just ordered one of these and paid for overnight shipping. Even though the website was sold out, I found someone who could ship me one. Hopefully they didn't scam me. It'll be here tomorrow. It's going to be one of the bigger molts. Everyone else only had babies for sale. So we got really lucky to find one. Now I had to put together his enclosure because overnight shipping is no joke. This thing will be here tomorrow. I kept the build super simple. Cork bark for their land area. Sticks for them to perch on, which I baked in the oven to kill any parasites and bacteria. And then I filled it with water where I planned to put the fish. And before I was finished with really anything, the mantises arrived. Wait, is there two of them? They came in the mail and they actually sent me two. So I guess we're doing this with both of them. His mouth looks crazy. They traveled pretty far to get here. So before I ask them to do anything, I just let them settle in for a few days and get comfortable. Before we get into this, I want to talk about why I chose this specific species. The giant Chinese praying mantis is one of the largest mantis species you can find in North America. Adults can get up to 4 inches long. They're also one of the few mantis species that's actually established itself in the wild here. You can find them in fields and gardens all over the Midwest, including right here in Michigan. These front legs are called raptorial legs. They work like a bear trap, spring loaded, lined with spines, and they close so fast that most prey doesn't even register what happened. They also have the most advanced vision of any insect. They have five eyes in total, two large compound eyes, and three smaller simple eyes in the middle. And they're the only insect that can actually turn their head to look at something. All of that is just to say that they're genuinely built for this. It's instinct, it's natural, and it's just how a mantis is wired. Hey guys, it's been about two days and the water looks like sewage water because this is putting out so many tannins. So basically, I'm going to remove this. I'm going to remove all the water and build a new enclosure and we're going to go with plan B. I just finished redoing their tank and it looks so much better. And for the fish thing, we'll figure that out later. This is going to be way better for their health. Now for our first challenge, the easiest one, prey that barely moves. Since I built the new enclosure, our preying mantises have been exploring a lot more and seem way more comfortable. So it was time to test them with our first food. I put a mealworm larva right on a leaf where a preying mantis could see it. But preying mantises are visual hunters and this guy did not seem to care about the larva. In fact, I think he was content just chewing on his legs. So I looked up a video of bugs moving on a screen to try and attract their attention to the larva and it actually worked. The other preying mantis was freaking out. So I grabbed a second larva and dropped it right in front of him and he immediately locked on. All right, he's looking right at the larva. I think any second now he's going to shrink. He has half of the larva in each hand. All right, as brutal as that was, he cleared level one way too easily. So it's time to step it up a little bit. Even though mealworms are technically the baby version of the pupa from level one, they have a harder exoskeleton and they move more actively, which is a small step up, but a step up nonetheless. I just want to get them used to hunting varied prey and build a balanced diet. So that's where the next few levels will really pick up. Right when I drop him in, the mantis locks on and immediately runs over to check it out. He gets close and eventually strikes, missing the mealworm. But then he strikes again, this time flawless. He wastes no time and takes a bite right away. These things are so brutal. Look at that. It looks like an alien. All right, he just finished eating the head. I don't know what it is about these guys, but they always go for the head first, which I guess is maybe the most humane. He finishes up his meal, and as you can see right here, you can see the food moving through his body. After about 10 minutes or so, the mealworm is completely gone and our mantis heads back up to the top of the enclosure to look for his next meal. The mealworms were really slow, so it's time to test his speed for real. Next up is crickets. These guys are fast, and if given the chance, they'll jump clear across the enclosure. I drop in six of them, and within seconds they start to scatter, exploring every corner of the enclosure. But it doesn't take long for the mantis to clock their movement. He locks on, and before I can even react, he strikes. He immediately starts digging in, wasting no time enjoying the rewards of his hunt. All right, he has a meal in hand right now, and he's looking at this cricket right here, so I don't know if he's going to drop the current cricket and go for that one, but it kind of seems like it. Cricket number two doesn't even see it coming. It ducks behind a leaf thinking it's safe, but he's already there, lunging in and grabbing it just as fast as the first. Two crickets down, he takes a moment to clean off his legs like nothing happened, completely unbothered, but he's about to find out his next opponent isn't going down without a fight. Next up is the big one. I caught this grasshopper myself out in a field, and it's easily three times the size of any cricket we just fed him. And they're built for launching themselves distances that would be like a human jumping the length of a football field. When I drop it in, unlike the crickets, it doesn't panic. It just goes still. Our mantis clocks it right away, but doesn't rush in, creeping forward slowly. They get into a staring match, but eventually the mantis strikes and grabs onto the grasshopper. But the grasshopper uses his strong back legs to jump away, narrowly escaping. But the mantis isn't done. He squares back up, tracks it down, and this time there's no hesitation. Second strike, he full extends, and it's over. But as intense as that looked, this is exactly what these guys are built to do. A big protein packed meal like this is basically a 5 star dinner in the mantis world, and he's going to be very content for the next little while. Which brings us to the real test. They've cleared bugs that crawl, bugs that jump, and bugs that fight back on land. But that's only half of what we built this enclosure for. Up next we'll find out if a mantis raised his whole life on solid ground can actually catch a fish. I lower the fish into the tank, and our mantis notices right away. But he's confused. He's staring at the water like he doesn't know what to do with it. On land his strikes are precise. He knows exactly how far to reach and exactly when to fire. But water bends everything. The fish looks closer than it is or farther than it is. And you can see him recalibrating, leaning in, pulling back, trying to figure out the rules of an environment his body was never designed for. But then something weird happens. Both of them stop caring. They have no more interest in the fish or food at all. I started checking on them constantly trying to figure out what's going on, and then I finally saw it. They molted. Both of them shed their exoskeleton, which explains everything. Right after a molt their new exoskeleton is almost paper thin, and until it hardens up they're vulnerable to basically anything, including their own prey. So for their safety I paused everything for a couple of days until they were back to full strength. Once their exoskeletons had fully hardened, I put the fish back in, and their appetite returned instantly. The mantis locked onto the fish, tracking it around the top of the water. This is exactly what it would do in the wild. He had to be super patient and wait for the right moment though, because the fish was not giving him much time at all. But then the fish sat at the top of the tank for just a little bit too long. Our mantis wasn't going to waste this opportunity. He grabs the fish before I can even react. Preying mantises in the wild near ponds and streams genuinely do this exact thing. It's a documented part of their natural diet, and every step of this was built around giving them a real fair shot at prey the way they'd encounter it outside captivity. This is the same thing that happens in nature every single day, we just usually don't get to see it.