h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

We get praying mantises in our garden in France but not in the UK. They're quite harmless to humans and will sit on your hand or your clothes. They are fearsome predators though, and it's said that the females eat the males after mating.

Tavaron kindly photographed this one after a discussion we had about the German word for them: Gottesanbeterinnen. Since the word literally means 'females who pray to God', I had become confused by a scientist who claimed to be experimenting on them....I feared a case of religious persecution....

I hope the scientist wasn't trying to breed really big praying mantises. That would be really scary!

I hope not, too. I'm not at all happy with the smaller ones.

One was on the door handle of my car one day. I thought it was a blade of grass, and got a fright. I have insect PTSD.

You did well uploading pics this week, DG - quite a challenge, there!

This is fascinating - I imagined Praying Mantises were tropical creatures, so it is impressive to see a photo of one in a garden! I love that gladiolus - great colour and I can imagine it had great impact in the garden with such large blooms Not quite as tall as that verbascum, though - amazing!

We had quite a few praying mantises this year. Many quite small so I guess they hatched in our garden. You mainly need a quite natural garden for them to appear, as far as I know.

The verbascum still has blooms, it's amazing, really!

That is a truly lovely plant. Is is found in mountainous areas? When did it start blooming?

That is a truly remarkable plant. Does it prefer to grow in mountains? When did it start blooming?

Ther German name is 'Königskerze' and different species of them seem to grow in large parts of Europe and Asia. I think it started blooming about one month ago.

Still don't get why the female would be praying, they don't get eaten... Or maybe they pray that they will never run out of males to eat?