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Re: Fish pain - Insect gains - Who will PETA the poor Worm?
- To: Aquatic-Plants at actwin_com
- Subject: Re: Fish pain - Insect gains - Who will PETA the poor Worm?
- From: Paul Krombholz <krombhol at teclink_net>
- Date: Sun, 4 May 2003 08:08:19 -0500
- In-reply-to: <200305031053.h43ArK2A009976@otter.actwin.com>
- References: <200305031053.h43ArK2A009976@otter.actwin.com>
* From: "S. Hieber" <shieber at yahoo_com>
......As for male praying mantis. No one knows if they learn
their lesson -- no one has tested their behavior after
being eaten. And what some guys would do for you know
what, who says an insect wouldn't risk it or ignore the
consequences?
I studied hunger and food consumption in praying mantids, and I have
seen behavior that certainly looks like they feel pain. If a mantid
gets an injury to a foot, it will snatch it up and put it in its
mouth and groom it. It puts the foot part way down and then returns
it to the mouth for more grooming. It may do this repeatedly for
several minutes.
At least in the species I studied, Tenodera sinensis, the large
Chinese mantid, the males sneak up on the females and then pounce on
them. The females become immobile if they are ready to be mated, so
if the male lands on the female pointed the wrong way, he can reverse
his position without any movement from the female. If the eggs in
the female are not developed, she is not ready to be mated. She will
struggle and scramble about when the male lands on her, and he will
lose interest and wander off without trying to copulate. I have
observed more than a hundred matings in the field when I was
measuring food consumption, and males never got eaten. A female that
has a male on her will spend the day down in the vegetation, rather
than up on the flowers, where she normally gets most of her food
which is insects that visit flowers. After the mating is over she
will be up on the flowers the next day, and she did not eat the male,
because, if she had, I would have seen the weight gain. It is true
that, if you cut a male's head off, copulatory movements of the
abdomen are initiated. However, this happens very rarely in Tenodera.
While headless males may complete mating, the whole notion of manitd
cannibalism, and "gruesome wedding rituals" has taken on a mythical
status, starting with lurid descriptions by Jean Henri Fabre. It
happens a lot less than most people think. I saw in the field a fair
number of females that had two males mounted on them. This always
resulted in a silent, protracted struggle for position, where the
loser would give up and leave after about a day.
--
Paul Krombholz in humid, summer-like central Mississippi