Smitten

It's one of these common knowledge things you don't remember where you learned or why it stuck. You don't know why you remember that image of a praying mantis decapitating its mate... Did you read about it somewhere? Was it one of your older cousin's attempts at trying to impress you with his wealth of worthless amazing facts? Maybe it's that nature documantary you watched at your grandma's house when you were a kid.

Whichever it was, I thought it's a good time to revisit this subject... got the itch for some compulsive googling.

The internet tells me there are over 2000 species of mantises. Some engage in sexual cannibalism more often than others. Those that do, apparently, are responsible for giving those that don't a bad rep.

Although the praying mantis is insanely famous for its cannibalistic mating process, in actuality it only occurs 5-31% of the time. Especially in laboratory conditions of bright lights and confinement, the female is more likely to be a bitch and eat the male. They do it as means of survival.

Or do they? Hmmm... more like femminist-extermist terrorists masquerading as survivalists.