{"id":110951,"date":"2025-09-01T02:38:09","date_gmt":"2025-09-01T02:38:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/110951\/"},"modified":"2025-09-01T02:38:09","modified_gmt":"2025-09-01T02:38:09","slug":"it-might-look-like-a-beautiful-flower-but-its-actually-a-deadly-predator-meet-one-very-unlikely-looking-cold-hearted-mass-killer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/110951\/","title":{"rendered":"It might look like a beautiful flower but it&#8217;s actually a deadly predator&#8230; Meet one very unlikely-looking, cold-hearted mass killer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>One of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/insects-invertebrates\/prettiest-insects\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">world&#8217;s most beautiful insects<\/a>, the orchid mantis, is\u00a0just too beautiful to be taken seriously as\u00a0a\u00a0deadly\u00a0predator &#8211; but that&#8217;s what it is says Stuart Blackman.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.discoverwildlife.com\/animal-facts\/camouflage-animals-cryptic-coloration\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Camouflage<\/a> is usually about hiding. And plenty of insects\u00a0deploy\u00a0colours and patterns that allow\u00a0them to blend in amongst flowers. But\u00a0this gorgeous denizen of Southeast Asian\u00a0forests\u00a0doesn\u2019t want\u00a0to hide; it wants to be seen.<\/p>\n<p>The disguise attracts pollinating insects in search of nectar, which the mantis snatches from the air when they get close enough.\u00a0In fact, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.journals.uchicago.edu\/doi\/10.1086\/673858\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">experiments have shown that the mantis\u00a0attracts\u00a0more insects <\/a>than\u00a0a real flower\u00a0does.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One of the world&#8217;s most beautiful insects, the orchid mantis, is\u00a0just too beautiful to be taken seriously as\u00a0a\u00a0deadly\u00a0predator&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":110952,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[49,48,66,323],"class_list":{"0":"post-110951","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110951\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}