🚨 ARTHROPOD OF THE DAY 🚨

The male and female Carolina mantis (Stagmomantis carolina) look very different from one another. The adult female has short wings and is big and heavy. The male has long wings and is small, light and active. The male is able to fly and will do so readily, but the female is unable to fly.

In an 1886 observation from the journal "Science," entomologist Leland Ossian Howard noted that on placing a male mantis with a female, the female systematically proceeded to eat the male's left leg, left eye and right leg, and then decapitate and eat his head. The male, keep in mind, was attempting to mate with her the whole time -- which she eventually acquiesced to, with her headless and mostly legless partner. While Howard stressed that he'd never seen it before, he also rather breathlessly stated, "It seems to be only by accident that a male ever escapes alive from the embraces of his partner"