Things I never knew about praying mantises

The big ones can eat snakes, hummingbirds, and mice.

A mummified mantis was discovered in Egypt in the 1920s, in a tiny clay sarcophagus.

Mantises are more closely related to cockroaches than to grasshoppers.

(I did know that the males can mate after having had their heads eaten off.)

(We are making much use of our DVR. We are watching lots of almost-lurid Science Channel stuff in the evenings.)

Icon photo courtesy of fractal9091.