world's largest praying mantis

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Malnra

Malnra

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The world's largest praying mantis was recorded at 45cm (18") long, in Southern China, in 1929.

Now THAT would be a mantis to own, though what would you feed it ? small children ? :p

 
It was probably one of those stick-mimic mantids, in which case, I don't have a hard time believing that.

 
I have started an IV drip of steriods on my giant female asian in hopes her ooth produces large babies .... :p

 
Geoff_K said:
The world's largest praying mantis was recorded at 45cm (18") long, in Southern China, in 1929.Now THAT would be a mantis to own, though what would you feed it ? small children ? :p
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source?

 
Hi.

This information is completely wrong. Nevertheless, it is frequently found in the forums. Please consider that the internet also contains complete ######. Do not believe anything you read there. The largest species reach 17 cm, which is still a lot.

Regards,

Christian

 
Christian said:
Hi.This information is completely wrong. Nevertheless, it is frequently found in the forums. Please consider that the internet also contains complete ######. Do not believe anything you read there. The largest species reach 17 cm, which is still a lot.

Regards,

Christian
Click to expand...
Unless you were there you cannot say with 100% certanty it is incorrect. They just recently descovered a claw to a sea scorpion

" Sea scorpions are thought to be the extinct aquatic ancestors of scorpions and possibly all arachnids."The 18-inch (46-centimeter) claw likely belonged to an 8-foot (2.46-meter) sea scorpion.
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http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/200711...footseascorpion

for all we know WAY back in time Mantis were 3 feet long ... /shrugs

 
No they weren't. Did you watch too many Godzilla movies? ;)

Sea scorpions were aquatic arthropods, using gills. There is no size restriction for gill-breathing aquatic animals, except maybe statical constraints.

Insects are primarily land insects breathing with tracheal tubes, and are size restricted due to this point. They may reach sizes a little larger than seen today, but the only time when insects and other arthropods were considerably larger was the Carboniferous (due to a higher oxygen content of the atmosphere). Mantids are not as old. Other info is outdated.

So, I do not have to be there to know there IS no mantid as large as 29 cm. There is enough serious literature on this issue. The internet contains a lot of wrong information on mantids. Once I wanted to contribute to the Wikipedia article, but ceased it after more and more bull**** accumulated. I did not find one site on mantids without wrong info yet.

So, sometimes the good old (or even new!) paper literature is by far better than any site on the net. Journals edit and review the information they get. On the net, everyone can post everything, regardless whether he knows about it or not.

To make a long story short: I know that there is no mantid known to science (science, not the www!) which reaches that size. Maybe that Chinese thing was a stick insect or something.

regards,

Christian

 
I remember reading a topic about this a long time ago here on the forums. Someone else confirmed that it was incorrect also. It used to be on wikipedia, but as you can see it was removed, probably because it wasn't true.

However, it would be really awesome if a mantis like that DID exist. :p

 
Christian said:
The internet contains a lot of wrong information on mantids. Once I wanted to contribute to the Wikipedia article, but ceased it after more and more bull**** accumulated. I did not find one site on mantids without wrong info yet.
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I'm going to say no more about what Christian has already stated about 29cm mantids (he's right).

I will say that I completely agree with the other comments also. The internet IS full of rubbish. And yes, most mantis websites are full of mis-information and errors.

 
I was once on Gaia Online or whatever its called, and I was in a shop, and there was some sort of factoid or blurb that said "A male praying mantis can't do his "deed" until the female has eaten his head!" or something along those lines.

And this website probably has more than a million members worldwide.

Ridiculous...but still, thats why we've got people like Christian to come in and clear it all up. :lol:

 
dragonflys at one time had wingspans of 2 feet .. i think i can guarantee there are non that big now .... but hey .. it really doesnt matter since neither of us were there to see the "mantis" and are not likely to see one that big today /shrugs

 
Geoff_K said:
Unless you were there you cannot say with 100% certanty it is incorrect. They just recently descovered a claw to a sea scorpion
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this is such a lazy and reckless rebuttal.

1. the same goes to you - you can not say with 100% certainty as well that that is correct.

2. given the great amount we know about mantises, it is UNREASONABLE to even believe it's quite probable. OCCAM'S RAZOR.

 
Geoff_K said:
for all we know WAY back in time Mantis were 3 feet long ... /shrugs
Click to expand...
I saw that mantis movie where the mantids were 50feet tall. Man, I can't imagine how crazy that was for the people who had to catch those things for the movie. I wonder where they caught them... ;)

 
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