Christian, your response was humorous at some areas, but the true meaning was rather sarcastic, and it was not taken well by some people. They might have been offended. You do understand that right?
I feel that I see faults in both sides of the argument. Yes, it is true that many webpages have this information, but practically anybody can make their own page and bs information. This does not make wikipedia outright wrong. Yes, it does sometimes have incorrect information, but then again, not all of it is.
Although there is no physical evidence that such a mantis exists, that does not rule out the possibilty that there is one. We supposedly have hundreds of thousands of different species we haven't discovered yet, and it is possible that just one mantis speceis just happens to be large. There is no real evidence that it's not possible. Some areas around the globe, perhaps, are the perfect conditions for such a mantis to grow, with little or no natural predators, plenty of food/oxygen, etc. It is almost like the belief of life out of the earth. There are millions or billions of stars out there, lots with their own solar systems. Just because we haven't found any life near the ones around us doesn't mean there isn't any out there. But then again, it doesn't prove there is. We haven't really discovered our Earth all too well as well. In fact, the rainforest have thousands of species, some scientists assume, still waiting to be discovered. Perhaps one is a giant mantis? In other words...you can't just simply toss out the idea that such a mantis exists, however, with no evidence, it is hard to prove it exists. This could be why there are so many skeptics.
Scientifically, yes, they aren't supposed to exist. However, several "scientific" theories that seemed plausible have simply been wiped out. For example, scientists once believed that there were no large insects now because of gravity. They believed that the gravity would cause the insect's exoskeleton implode into itself. It sounds plausible, and people actually believed it. However, this has been proven wrong by fossils of large, for example, dragonflies. However, no one really knows why the insects have gotten smaller, so they have come up with theories. However, theories could be ridiculous, even when made by respected scientists. For example, one scientist believed that the stegasaurus actually rolled up and attacked that way by rolling towards the enemy and hitting them with the spikes :blink: . To me, I don't believe that oxygen has a really large factor on growth. For example, humans have grown taller from their ancestors, even though, as time went on, populations grew so the oxygen levels should have fallen. Anyways, just my opinion.
