In attacking the Truxalis and the Ephippigera, less dangerous game than the grey cricket and the Decticus, the spectral pose is less imposing and of shorter duration.  It is often enough to throw forward the talons; this is so in the case of the Epeirus, which is seized by the middle of the body, without a thought of its venomous claws.  With the smaller crickets, which are the customary diet in my cages as at liberty, the Mantis rarely employs her means of intimidation; she merely seizes the heedless passer-by as she lies in wait.

When the insect to be captured may present some serious resistance, the Mantis is thus equipped with a pose which terrifies or perplexes, fascinates or absorbs the prey, while it enables her talons to strike with greater certainty.  Her gins close on a demoralised victim, incapable of or unready for defence.  She freezes the quarry with fear or amazement by suddenly assuming the attitude of a spectre.

The wings play an important part in this fantastic pose.  They are very wide, green on the outer edge, but colourless and transparent elsewhere.  Numerous nervures, spreading out fan-wise, cross them in the direction of their length.  Others, transversal but finer, cut the first at right angles, forming with them a multitude of meshes.  In the spectral attitude the wings are outspread and erected in two parallel planes which are almost in contact, like the wings of butterflies in repose.  Between the two the end of the abdomen rapidly curls and uncurls.  From the rubbing of the belly against the network of nervures proceeds the species of puffing sound which I have compared to the hissing of an adder in a posture of defence.  To imitate this curious sound it is enough rapidly to stroke the upper face of an outstretched wing with the tip of the finger-nail.

In a moment of hunger, after a fast of some days, the large grey cricket, which is as large as the Mantis or larger, will be entirely consumed with the exception of the wings, which are too dry.  Two hours are sufficient for the completion of this enormous meal.  Such an orgy is rare.  I have witnessed it two or three times, always asking myself where the gluttonous creature found room for so much food, and how it contrived to reverse in its own favour the axiom that the content is less than that which contains it.  I can only admire the privileges of a stomach in which matter is digested immediately upon entrance, dissolved and made away with.

The usual diet of the Mantis under my wire cages consists of crickets of different species and varying greatly in size.  It is interesting to watch the Mantis nibbling at its cricket, which it holds in the vice formed by its murderous fore-limbs.  In spite of the fine-pointed muzzle, which hardly seems made for such ferocity, the entire insect disappears excepting the wings, of which only the base, which is slightly fleshy, is consumed.  Legs, claws, horny integuments, all else is eaten.  Sometimes the great hinder thigh is seized by the knuckle, carried to the mouth, tasted, and crunched with a little air of satisfaction.  The swollen thigh of the cricket might well be a choice “cut” for the Mantis, as a leg of lamb is for us!