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Stereopsis:
Humans vs Praying Mantis

This essay is very well written. The author discusses how praying mantises have a special vision, called stereopsis. A gift they use while hunting hummingbirds. Their stereopsis is much more simple and efficient compared to humans stereopsis.

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A college student from Case Western Reverse University actually created a robot modeled after a praying mantis.

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The video Shown below shows how the study of the praying mantis was conducted.

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New 3D vision discovered in praying mantises

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This article discusses how the praying mantis has been found eating birds all over the world. Different species of the mantis too, not just one certain type of mantis. They actually pose a small threat to birds, well only the small birds.

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A study by zoologists from Switzerland and the US shows: praying mantises all over the globe also include birds in their diet. The Wilson Journal of Ornithology has just published the results.
Praying mantises are carnivorous insects with powerful raptorial front legs that usually depend on arthropods such as insects or spiders as their primary prey. Rather infrequently, they have also been witnessed eating small vertebrates such as frogs, lizards, salamanders or snakes. A new study by the zoologists Martin Nyffeler (University of Basel), Mike Maxwell (National University, La Jolla, California), and James Van Remsen (Louisiana State University) now shows that praying mantises all over the world also kill and eat small birds.

Feeding on birds is a global pattern

The researchers gathered and documented numerous examples of bird-eating mantises. In a systematic review, they were able to show that praying mantises from twelve species and nine genera have been observed preying on small birds in the wild. This remarkable feeding behavior has been documented in 13 different countries, on all continents except Antarctica. There is also great diversity in the victims: birds from 24 different species and 14 families were found to be the prey of mantises. "The fact that eating of birds is so widespread in praying mantises, both taxonomically as well as geographically speaking, is a spectacular discovery," comments Martin Nyffeler from the University of Basel and lead author of the study.

Praying mantises pose a threat to small birds

The researchers assembled 147 documented cases of this feeding behavior from all over the world. However, more than 70 percent were reported in the US, where praying mantises often capture birds at hummingbird feeders or plants pollinated by hummingbirds in house gardens. Consequently, hummingbirds make up the vast majority of birds killed by praying mantises, with the Ruby-throated Hummingbird ( Archilochus colubris) being a particularly frequent victim.

Decades ago, several alien species of large mantises (e.g., Mantis religiosa and Tenodera sinensis) were released across North America as biological pest control agents. These imported species now constitute a new potential threat to hummingbirds and small passerine birds. However, there are also large native mantises that prey on birds. "Our study shows the threat mantises pose to some bird populations. Thus, great caution is advised when releasing mantises for pest control", says Nyffeler.
Original source
Martin Nyffeler, Michael R. Maxwell, J. V. Remsen, Jr.
Bird predation by praying mantises: a global perspective
The Wilson Journal of Ornithology (2017) 129(2): 331-344 | DOI: 10.1676/16-100.1
Further information
PD Dr. Martin Nyffeler, University of Basel, Department of Environmental Sciences, Tel. +41 61 702 07 03, email: martin.nyffeler@unibas.ch

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praying mantises hunt down birds worldwide

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Praying Mantises Hunt Down Birds Worldwide

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A study by zoologists from Switzerland and the US shows: praying mantises all over the globe also include birds in their diet. The Wilson Journal of Ornithology has just published the results. Praying mantises are carnivorous insects with powerful raptorial front legs that usually depend on arthropods such as insects or spiders as their primary prey.

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This article discusses that praying mantises around the world have been seen preying on birds. Which is quite interesting to me because you would think that over time they would evolve this hunting technique.

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Bird Predation By Praying Mantises_ A Global Persp

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This article written by William Brown shows that praying mantises are born with a cannibalistic mentality. Well at least the female praying mantis'  are. So are the female praying mantises the only ones capable of catching the hummingbird?

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Low Mate Encounter Rate Increases Male Risk Taking

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This video demonstrates how the praying mantis devours its prey! I wish I could have found a time lapse of a hummingbird being eaten.

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Praying Mantis eating a whole Locust ( TIMELAPSE 3 Hours in 1:30min ! )

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After diving more into research I found this article which is a  subtopic. This article shows that praying mantises have evolved their hunting techniques. They are capable of catching guppies out of a pond.

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from research organizations
Credit: Rajesh Puttaswamaiah
Commonly known to predate on insects, praying mantises have occasionally been observed to feed on vertebrates, including small birds, lizards, frogs, newts, mice, snakes and turtles. Mostly, such records have either not been scientifically validated or have occurred under induced and human-manipulated circumstances.

Nevertheless, no scientific data of mantises preying on fish existed until the recent study of Roberto Battiston, Musei del Canal di Brenta, Rajesh Puttaswamaiah, Bat Conservation India Trust, and Nayak Manjunath, published in the open access Journal of Orthoptera Research.

Last year, the team observed an adult male hunting and devouring guppies in a pond located in a private roof garden in Karnataka, India. Curiously enough, the predator came back five days in a row and caught a total of nine fish (a minimum of two a day). To reach its prey, the insect would walk on the leaves of water lilies and water cabbage growing on the surface of the pond.

Apart from being a curious first-of-its-kind, the observation raises three new discussion points worthy of further study, point out the researchers.

Firstly, the fact that praying mantises hunt on vertebrates outside cages in labs confirms that a single invertebrate species is indeed capable of having an impact on a whole ecosystem. In this case, a mantis preys on guppies which, in their turn, feed on aquatic insects.

Secondly, the discovery questions previous knowledge about the visual abilities of mantises. While the structure of their eyes clearly indicates that they have evolved to prey in daylight, the studied male specimen proved to be an excellent hunter in the dark. The insect managed to catch all nine fish either at sunset or late at night.

Besides visual, mantises might have evolved impressive learning abilities too. The researchers speculate that the observed repetitive behaviour might have been the result of personal experience, utilised to navigate the specimen. Sophisticated cognitive skills, on the other hand, might have allowed the mantis to develop its hunting strategies.

"Remembering the prey's abundance in a particular site, in relation to their ease of capture and their nutritional content, could be one important factor of this choice and indirectly influence the individual predator's fitness," comment the scientists. "This should be investigated in further studies."

Journal Reference:

Roberto Battiston, Rajesh Puttaswamaiah, Nayak Manjunath. The fishing mantid: predation on fish as a new adaptive strategy for praying mantids (Insecta: Mantodea). Journal of Orthoptera Research, 2018; 27 (2): 155 DOI: 10.3897/jor.27.28067

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fish; insects (including butterflies); fisheries; wild animals; zoology; animals; behavioral science; frogs and reptiles

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Two fishes a day keep the mantid coming back to prey: The first fishing praying mantis

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For the first time, a praying mantis is recorded to fish. For five days in a row, an adult male was observed hunting and devouring a total of nine guppies from a pond located in a private roof garden in Karnataka, India.

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This news article is very interesting. The author talks about how the praying mantis catches the hummingbirds. The praying mantis perches itself on a hummingbird feeder, while waiting for a bird it get in its strike zone.

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While praying mantises aren't the target visitors for a hummingbird feeder, a startling photo shows that they might come around anyway-but not for the sugar water.

Several years ago, New Mexico resident and former National Park Service ranger Tom Vaughan spotted a bizarre sight at a backyard bird feeder: a dead hummingbird in the clutches of a praying mantis, the insect feeding on the bird's carcass.

Nibbling on one hummingbird clearly wasn't enough for the ravenous mantis. "After this shot, the mantis dropped the bird, crawled across the underside of the plastic feeder, came up on the other side and prepared to nab another hummer," Vaughan wrote in a June 4 Facebook comment describing the photograph.

Mantises are surprisingly ferocious insects; scientists have previously seen them attacking and feasting on a variety of hummingbird species. Although it has happened before, it is rarely caught on camera. "It was probably what we would call a lucky shot," says Kevin McGowan, an ornithologist at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, NY.

The photograph is so remarkable, in fact, that it will be included in an upcoming publication about the predation of birds by praying mantises in The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, according to a statement Vaughan posted to Facebook on June 4.

INSATIABLE INSECTS

McGowan notes he has seen mantises stalking hummingbird feeders before, but has never witnessed an attack. Anecdotal accounts of these insects devouring hummingbirds are brutal: Mantises have been seen impaling the chest of the bird, dangling it by its legs, or in the case of this photo, grabbing it by the skull and feeding on its head.

Other descriptions of mantises eating hummingbirds note that the insect usually starts by grabbing the bird at the neck, surprising it while it is feeding on a flower or at a feeder.

Once the bird is subdued, the mantis slowly nibbles along the neckline and keeps at it for hours until most of the flesh is gone. "They have to chew through all that fluff, so I'm not surprised they go for the head," McGowan adds.

Hummingbirds are likely the only birds that a mantis would be able to catch: "Hummingbirds are tiny, five or six grams-less than a nickel," McGowan says, adding that mantises are about the same size.

Only about four inches long, mantises have also been known to ambush mice, feast on lizards, and violently cannibalize members of their own species. Generally, though, their meals of choice are other smaller insects, especially pollinating insects such as bees.

In fact, McGowan says that hummingbirds' pollinator-like knack for buzzing around and sipping nectar may well make them all the more attractive to mantises. "If you act like a bee and you're in those places, that starts to put you at risk for getting hit by a predator," he says.

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Praying Mantis Devours Hummingbird in Shocking Photo

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While praying mantises aren't the target visitors for a hummingbird feeder, a startling photo shows that they might come around anyway-but not for the sugar water. Several years ago, New Mexico resident and former National Park Service ranger Tom Vaughan spotted a bizarre sight at a backyard bird feeder: a dead hummingbird in the clutches of a praying mantis, the insect feeding on the bird's carcass.

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The research conducted by these group of researchers is what i have based a majority of my paper on. They discuss how the praying mantises eyes work and how simple, yet effective they are.

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The video shown below is proof the the praying mantis is capable of catching a flying hummingbird.

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In this book, David discusses a lot bout the brain. When he talks about how some animals/ insects are hardwired or livewired, I thought it was very revelant to my topic. Most insects are hardwired for the enviroment they are placed into. When it comes to Praying Mantises they seem to be livewired because they have adapted to different enviroments and have learned new hunting techniques.

Eagleman, David. The Brain: The Story of You. Vintage books, 2017.

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Read 1,725 reviews from the world's largest community for readers. Locked in the silence and darkness of your skull, your brain fashions the rich narrative...

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This article was the breakthrough into my main research on the Praying mantis. Michelle discussed how special their vision was with their hunting abilities. They have a special type of 3D vision unlike any other insect which gives them the upper hand in the hunting world.

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Many vertebrate animals, including us humans, have two eyes that are able to perceive three-dimensional structures.

But a new study has discovered that praying mantises have an altogether unique ability to see in 3D.

This so-called 3D vision - also known as stereopsis - is how creatures with binocular vision produce depth perception when they're taking in the world.

Each of our two eyes sees the world from a slightly different perspective - these are then overlaid into one image in our brains, the slight differences between the two images allowing for an instantaneous calculation of distance (hence, depth perception).

But praying mantises, with their tiny bug brains and huge bulging eyes, are a special case.

Not only are they the only insects that have stereopsis, they're actually the only invertebrates with this ability - and studying how their eyes work could help develop more effective robot eyes.

If you want to learn about how praying mantises see the world, one thing you can do is stick teeny tiny 3D glasses on their faces, and this is what researchers at the University of Newcastle in the UK have been doing for some years.

To test depth perception in praying mantises, lead author and behavioural ecologist Vivek Nityananda and his team showed the insects movies with illusory fields of depth, using a simplified version of the technology that lets us watch 3D movies at the cinema.

The praying mantises' little glasses were gently affixed to their heads with a harmless and removable piece of beeswax.

The team used two types of movie - the first type was a clip of delicious moving insect prey hovering right in front of the mantis. The mantis could not only see the prey, it also tried to catch it.

The second type was the same type of movie used to test depth perception in humans. Each side shows a static pattern of random dots, and a patch of dots moves outwards in a spiral.

In each individual frame, this target was indistinguishable from the background pattern - only by watching both would the movement emerge over time.

To understand the results, you need to understand that humans are very good at depth perception in still scenes, even when nothing is moving.

Mantises, on the other hand, don't need to use stereopsis on static things, since they only attack moving prey.

This means that their depth perception only focuses on things that are changing, and it works brilliantly. The mantises were able to see changes in the movies that human eyes were incapable of picking out.

"This is a completely new form of 3D vision as it is based on change over time instead of static images," Nityananda said.

"In mantises it is probably designed to answer the question 'is there prey at the right distance for me to catch?"

Because insects have such tiny brains, this information could help figure out how to develop computer vision that requires relatively little computing power, the researchers said.

The research has been published in the journal Current Biology.

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An Entirely New Form of 3D Vision Was Just Discovered in Praying Mantises

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Many vertebrate animals, including us humans, have two eyes that are able to perceive three-dimensional structures. But a new study has discovered that praying mantises have an altogether unique ability to see in 3D. This so-called 3D vision - also known as stereopsis - is how creatures with binocular vision produce depth perception when they're taking in the world.

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This is the article that started my all my research into the praying mantis. I was immediately infatuated after reading that Praying mantises have the ability to eat hummingbirds.

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A praying mantis outfitted with 3-D glasses during an experiment to determine whether the insects see in three dimensions. The conclusion: absolutely. Credit Credit Newcastle University

Basics
Scientists have developed a healthy respect for mantises, acrobatic hunters with 3-D vision and voracious appetites.

A praying mantis outfitted with 3-D glasses during an experiment to determine whether the insects see in three dimensions. The conclusion: absolutely. Credit Credit Newcastle University

Tom Vaughan, a photographer then living in Colorado's Mancos Valley, kept a hummingbird feeder outside his house. One morning, he stepped through the portico door and noticed a black-chinned hummingbird dangling from the side of the red plastic feeder like a stray Christmas ornament.

At first, Mr. Vaughan thought he knew what was going on. "I'd previously seen a hummingbird in a state of torpor," he said, "when it was hanging straight down by its feet, regenerating its batteries, before dropping down and flying off."

On closer inspection, Mr. Vaughan saw that the hummingbird was hanging not by its feet but by its head. And forget about jumping its batteries: the bird was in the grip of a three-inch-long green praying mantis.

The mantis was clinging with its back legs to the rim of the feeder, holding its feathered catch in its powerful, seemingly reverent front legs, and methodically chewing through the hummingbird's skull to get at the nutritious brain tissue within.

"It was staring at me as it fed," Mr. Vaughan said. "Of course, I took a picture of it." Startled by the clicking shutter, the mantis dropped its partially decapitated meal, crawled under the feeder - and began menacing two hummingbirds on the other side.

"Talk about cognitive dissonance," Mr. Vaughan said. "I always thought of mantises as wonderful things to have in your garden to get rid of bugs, but it turns out they sometimes go for larger prey, too."

"It gave me new respect for mantises," he added.

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Credit Tom Vaughan/FeVa Fotos

Mr. Vaughan's sentiment is echoed by a cadre of researchers who place mantises in a class of their own among the swarming Class Insecta, and who are discovering a range of skills and predilections that make mantises act like aspiring vertebrates.

Praying mantises are the only insects able to swivel their heads and stare at you. Those piercing eyes are much like yours, equipped with 3-D vision and a fovea - a centralized concentration of light receptors - the better to focus and track.

A mantis can jump as unerringly as a cat, controlling its trajectory through an intricate series of twists and turns distributed across its legs and body, all to ensure a flawless landing on a ridiculously iffy target nearly every time.

The mantis appetite likewise turns out to leap and bound, and with scant regard for food-chain decorum.

By the standard alimentary sequence, insects feed on plants or one another, and then birds hunt down insects. But just as there are carnivorous plants like the Venus flytrap, mantises prey on hummingbirds and other small-to-middling birds more often than most people realize.

James V. Remsen of the Museum of Natural Science at Louisiana State University and his colleagues documented 147 cases of mantis-on-bird predation in 13 countries representing all continents but Antarctica - not surprising, Dr. Remsen said in an interview, since there are no mantises on Antarctica.

Hummingbirds were the most common target, but mantises also went after warblers, sunbirds, honeyeaters, flycatchers, vireos and European robins. Large species like the Chinese mantis, which grows to four inches in length, were the most avid avivores, and females were responsible for virtually all the bird-killing observed worldwide.

In two reported cases, females feasted on birds while copulating with males. Sometimes the mantises would tuck in through the bird's breastbone, but more often they went for the head, Dr. Remsen said.

"They bite in and eat the brains," he said, "which might imply this is something they're professionals at."

Some mantises in North America now seem to view hummingbird feeders as happy hunting grounds. Kris Okamoto, a retired nurse in San Juan Capistrano, Calif., recently came running when the young son of her house painter cried out that a praying mantis had snatched a hummingbird from her feeder.

Seeing that the bird was already dead, its skull pierced, Ms. Okamoto and the boy settled down and watched the mantis eat its fill of bird brain. When the postprandial mantis crept back up the feeder, Ms. Okamoto gently pushed it off with a stick. Not good enough.

"It started crawling back toward the feeder," she said. "So we took it away completely and put it over the fence."

Researchers emphasize that bird predation by mantises remains rare and is insignificant compared to the carnage linked to, say, free-roaming cats. Nevertheless, that the insects have learned to seek out bird feeders for a meal signifies "another step in cognition," Dr. Remsen said. "We're lucky praying mantises aren't our size."

Hunting is a professional trademark of the mantid order: the 2,500 known species are all predators, usually of insects and other small invertebrates. Some mantises chase down their prey, but many are consummate ambush artists, waiting with Zen stillness in the grass or among flowers for the right moment to strike.

Their closest relatives are the cockroaches, from which they diverged about 250 million years ago, said Gavin J. Svenson, curator of invertebrate zoology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and a leading authority on praying mantises. The family resemblance can still be seen in the long, slender antennae and the triangular, movie-alien shape of the head, among other features.

But praying mantises rise above the flattened scuttling posture that makes cockroaches look so ... verminy. Praying mantises "are unusually charismatic," said William D. Brown, who studies them at the State University of New York at Fredonia. Those large eyes, the way they turn to look at you, gives them a "certain personality" that most insects lack, he added.

Molecular and evolutionary studies suggest that mantises diversified in parallel with angiosperms - not because they had anything to do with flowering plants directly, but in part to more effectively prey on the insects that ate or pollinated the plants. Some mantises evolved to look like showy blossoms, a cancan of deadly come-ons.

Those show-offs don't like playing wallflower. The orchid mantises of Asia, for example, generally avoid lingering around the flowers they imitate, and instead seek out patches of green vegetation. "They themselves become the flower," Dr. Svenson said. "They're a conspicuous beacon for pollinating insects."

The bigger the floral pollinators, the bulkier grew their predatory mantises, the better to catch, control and consume even well-armed bumblebees and wasps.

Other mantises resemble gnarled twigs, scraps of tree bark or decomposing leaves, blending in beautifully with forest underbrush, tree trunk or canopy, a cryptic approach to fool would-be prey and their own predators alike. The smallest mantises flit around in the leaf litter of Australia and are "no bigger than your pinkie nail," Dr. Svenson said. Yet the stick-mimicking mantises of Africa can be nearly as long as your forearm.

Mantises find their prey visually, and their exceptionally sophisticated eyesight has lately caught the attention of researchers. Jenny Read of the Institute of Neuroscience at Newcastle University in Britain and her colleagues recently demonstrated that praying mantises have stereoptic, or 3-D, vision, the first definitive evidence for the talent shown in an invertebrate.

By seeing in stereo - that is, mentally triangulating the slightly different images received from two eyes into a single line of sight - an animal can get a sense of depth and distance.

"It's a complex ability, and we're still trying to understand the algorithms, the calculations, that our own brains use to do it," Dr. Read said.

Yet calculate the mantis clearly does. In experiments that traded charisma for cute, the researchers outfitted praying mantises with tiny homemade 3-D glasses: filters that effectively separated the two images a mantis would see when it looked at a screen.

A mantis will ignore a glowing box on a flat screen when viewing it without the benefit of 3-D glasses, the researchers found. But once the filters were in place, the mantis's brain was fooled into the illusion of a three-dimensional object hovering at just the right "catch range," an inch away, and began striking out into empty space as though at potential prey.

"Our brain is five orders of magnitude bigger than theirs," Dr. Read said. "So either our visual cortex is doing incredibly impressive things I don't know about yet, or we could get rid of most of it and replace it with a praying mantis brain."

Which, if it belonged to a female mantis, would surely cry, Must eat. Behind the female's bottomless appetite is the extraordinary size of her egg case, or ootheca, a frothy proteinous mass studded with up to 400 eggs that can amount to half her body weight.

The female secretes the bulging capsule onto a twig or other surface, where it hardens and protects the eggs as they develop. The job is so energy-intensive she can rarely manage an encore.

The difficulty of securing enough calories to fabricate an ootheca may help explain why females of some mantid species famously engage in sexual cannibalism - consuming their mates after, or even during, copulation. Whether a male mantis actively sacrifices himself for the sake of his progeny or simply fails to dart away from the female in time remains a topic of active research.

Dr. Brown, of SUNY-Fredonia, and Katherine L. Barry of Macquarie University in Australia showed that cannibalized males sired about 60 more eggs than did non-cannibalized fathers, an increase of 20 percent over the standard ootheca complement of 258 eggs.

The conclusion: If a male, after spending 3.5 hours in the typical mantis copulatory bout, has a better than one in five chance of encountering a second fertile female somewhere down the line, reproductive logic dictates that he should channel his inner Olympian and bolt.

Or jump - mantises are good at that. In another movie-themed set of experiments, Malcolm Burrows of Cambridge University and his co-workers showed that when they held a pencil vertically in front of a praying mantis at just the right distance, which varied depending on the size of the mantis, the insect couldn't help itself: it would jump onto the pencil.

"You could see it scanning with its head, weighing how far away the target was and at what orientation, and then it would jump and land successfully," Dr. Burrows said. "We thought, how on earth could it maneuver its body from a horizontal surface and onto a vertical one and do it so accurately every time?"

To deconstruct the movements, the researchers took high-speed videos of jumping mantises. They determined that the mantis curved its jointed abdomen up, rotated its front legs counterclockwise and its rear legs clockwise, and switched front and rear rotations once and then back again - all within 70-thousandths of a second.

The midriff bending was key. When the researchers glued the abdomen to prevent it from bending, "the mantis would crash headfirst into its target," Dr. Burrows said.

Somewhere, a hummingbird is laughing.

Correction:

A picture caption in an earlier version of this article, using information from a photographic agency, gave the incorrect name for a species of mantis. It is a devil's flower mantis, not an African devil mantis.

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Birds Beware: The Praying Mantis Wants Your Brain

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Basics Scientists have developed a healthy respect for mantises, acrobatic hunters with 3-D vision and voracious appetites. A praying mantis outfitted with 3-D glasses during an experiment to determine whether the insects see in three dimensions. The conclusion: absolutely. Credit Credit Newcastle University Tom Vaughan, a photographer then living in Colorado's Mancos Valley, kept a hummingbird feeder outside his house.