The Urban Pantheist

Chinese mantid Tenodera aridifolia sinensis

This mantid perches on a jar of fruit flies provided as easy prey. It and its many brothers and sisters hatched from an ootheca produced by this large female. Chinese mantids are becoming the most common mantids in North America, due to deliberate releases to control garden pests. I heard of more folks encountering mantids this year than any time since I was a child.

Mantises used to be lumped in the same Order as cockroaches and termites, and the information on Bugguide.net makes it sound like they still should be: "The concept of an order that includes at least cockroaches, termites, and mantids is nowadays widely supported by scientists." Furthermore, mantids "can be reasonably described as predatory roaches."

That last part doesn't quite pass the sniff test for me--the elongated thorax, the mobile head, the raptorial forearms...Even if it is correct taxonomically, it's a violation of the language: calling a mantid a predatory roach robs both words of their meaning.