Three species of mantises are found in the Maltese islands, with only one species familiar enough tohave a common Maltese name ­– debba tax-xitan (devil’s mare).

Mantises are tropical insects and most of the existing 2,200 mantis species are found only in the warmer parts of the world.

The praying mantis is related to cockroaches but they are not feared like the ubi-quitous American cockroach which often enters houses. The latter is so common indoors because a house provides it with a warm humid habitat very similar to the tropical African environment in which it evolved.

Mantises have large forward-looking elongated eyes, which give them binocular vision that allows them to accurately calculate distance when hunting. The shape of the mantises’ eyes has often been copied by special effects specialists designing aliens for movie sets.

Praying mantises are predators: they feed on insects which they catch with their two front legs. These are held folded in front of them and are used to grip insects that get too close to them.

Mantises can also rotate their heads 180 degrees to look behind them, making them even better hunters. They are the only insects able to do so.

Not all mantises restrict their diet to insects, as some of the larger species can catch reptiles, amphibians and birds.

Mantises are not just good hunters but also good at escaping predators. Most of them are well camouflaged, being either brown or green and can blend in perfectly to hide in vegetation.

They have a single ear located on the underside of their abdomen. With one ear they cannot detect the direction of a sound but they can detect ultrasound which is the sound made by bats to find their prey in the dark.

When a mantis detects a bat, it stops flying and either drops or dives to the ground to avoid being eaten. Flightless species are not in danger of being eaten by bats and usually do not have such an ear.

Three species of mantises are found in the Maltese islands but only one is familiar enough to have a common Maltese name, debba tax-xitan (devil’s mare).

A well-known characteristic of the praying mantis is the habit of female mantises to eat their mate during copulation. This characteristic was observed a good number of times while copulation was taking place in a laboratory but very rarely when the praying mantises were studied under natural conditions. It is probable that the female eats its mate when it is undernourished and needs nutrients to be able to form eggs.

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