{"id":24048,"date":"2019-06-28T02:00:04","date_gmt":"2019-06-28T06:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/?p=24048"},"modified":"2019-06-27T23:14:34","modified_gmt":"2019-06-28T03:14:34","slug":"storytime-26","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/2019\/06\/storytime-26\/","title":{"rendered":"Storytime 26"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/YouAreWhatYouEat.jpg\" alt=\"Chinese mantis Tenodera sinensis eating another\" width=\"750\" height=\"1125\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-24049\" \/><br clear=\"all\"\/>I had prepped this one as a potential illustration for the last composition post, but decided to use it instead for storytime &#8211; not much of a lateral shift, I know, but this one bears a little explanation. Taken a few years back at the old place, within the towering pampas grass that we had there, I spotted a very large Chinese mantis (<em>Tenodera sinensis<\/em>) deep within, partaking of a massive meal. This was about the time that the female mantids should be producing their egg sacs, and so their appetites were prodigious &#8211; and more than a little disturbing, at least from our perspective. Because that&#8217;s another female mantis of the same species, quite likely pregnant as well, that she&#8217;s eating.<\/p>\n<p>Most of us would view this with distaste, but that&#8217;s because <em>our<\/em> species is cooperative and relies on social interaction &#8211; not so with mantids. When it comes down to it, another mantis in the area means two things to them<strong>:<\/strong> a ready, abundant source of nourishment, and competition to their own genetic heritage. I&#8217;ve said before that I suspect the newborns engage in cannibalism, though I&#8217;ve never seen it directly &#8211; their numbers drop drastically within weeks. From a natural selection standpoint, this is what worked best among the options that appeared<strong>;<\/strong> the &#8216;goal,&#8217; if you will, is to pass along one&#8217;s genes, and even if the young are eating siblings that have the same genetic traits, as long as <em>one<\/em> reaches reproductive age, this is successful as far as genes go. But here, we have a double-whammy, ensuring adequate sustenance for the developing young as well as eliminating the number of <em>other<\/em> mantises (with the wrong genes) that will be competing for food come spring.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, I&#8217;m curious as to how much of the meal she was able to finish &#8211; it already looks far beyond what I would have imagined she could handle in the first place. I had initially taken it to be a grasshopper of some sort, but no &#8211; those hind legs definitely indicate another mantis. I&#8217;m sorry that I missed the altercation, really.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had prepped this one as a potential illustration for the last composition post, but decided to use it instead for storytime &#8211; not much of a lateral shift, I know, but this one bears a little explanation. Taken a few years back at the old place, within the towering pampas grass that we had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3,12],"tags":[4978,1262,4979,3189,4977],"class_list":["post-24048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nature","category-photo","category-random","tag-cannibalism","tag-chinese-mantis","tag-our-own-viewpoint","tag-tenodera-sinensis","tag-we-just-tear-one-another-down"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24048\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wading-in.net\/walkabout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}