Courtney Barnett: Creature of Habit (Praying Mantis Science with Jessica Ware) | Transcript
Listen and watch the episode here.
Australian songwriter Courtney Barnett joins entomologist Jessica Ware to explore the science and symbolism of the praying mantis. From ancient folklore to evolutionary behavior—including its infamous mating habits—they unpack what this strange, still creature is really doing… and why we can’t stop projecting meaning onto it.
Matt Whyte
Today's episode was recorded remotely from Los Angeles, California, New York City and Cooperstown, New York. Be sure to check out the video version of the conversation to see live praying mantis specimens. And of course, don't forget to click, subscribe and rate the show on your podcast platform of choice.
Jessica Ware
Patience is actually in a lot of folklore. People talk about praying mantises in the context of patience and stillness because often what they're doing, they're actually incredibly smart. That cloudy eyed head of theirs is is holding a lot of ganglia, a lot of neurons and great vision. And they're just kind of doing this, waiting for food. But that's the thing that you see them the most.
The creature of habit is waiting around to eat. I guess they're also looking for love. They do those two. Those are the two. There are two. Habits is like serial relationships, some of which end in cannibalism and then looking for food.
Clip from Courtney Barnett, “Mantis”
Praying mantis on my door. Looking for meaning or just any sign at all.
Matt Whyte
Welcome to sing for science, the show where musicians and scientists talk about music and science. I'm your host, Matt Whyte. Each week we'll talk about a song by our guest artist and how it connects with our guest scientists area of expertise. Today we'll be chatting with Australia songwriter and performer Courtney Barnett. Her latest album, Creature of Habit, features a vintage photograph of a praying mantis on its cover, frozen in its iconic prayer pose.
Matt Whyte
The Praying mantis theme surfaces again in the album's middle track, mantis, during which Courtney muses, Praying mantis on my door, looking for meaning or just any sign at all. Also joining us is renowned entomologist and curator at the American Museum of Natural History, Doctor Jessica, Ware. Jessica serves as chair of the Division of Invertebrate Zoology at the museum, where her research focuses on the evolution of insects and how their behavior and physiology adapt over time.
Matt Whyte
Jessica's work spans groups like dragonflies, termites, cockroaches, and the praying mantis, offering a broad view of how insects evolve and interact with their environments. The title of this week's episode is Creature of Habit The Science and Symbolism Behind the Praying Mantis. Hello, Courtney and Jessica, welcome to sing for science.
Jessica Ware
Hello. Hello. Thanks for having me.
Matt Whyte
So, Courtney, could you set the scene? Can you please tell us everything you can about the moment this mantis appeared?
Courtney Barnett
So I started working on this album in early 2023. And towards the end of that year, I'd kind of written half of this song, which is now called mantis. But at that point I was I was a bit stuck on lyrics, which then turned into I was just wondering about my life, what I was doing, where I was going.
Was I doing the right thing? All the all those, everything kind of came at me at once. And this one particular day I woke up and I was about to start writing, and I was making a coffee, and I looked up on my door frame. I was living in the desert at the time in Joshua Tree, and I looked up and I saw this small green praying mantis on the kitchen door, and I'd never seen one out there.
And it it felt like quite a special and rare moment. Well, it was it was for me at that time, and I think just where I was at at that point, I was I was just feeling so lost. And I looked up, you know, what does it mean when you say you're praying? Mantis? And I just found this whole world of meaning.
And the thing, the first thing I saw that I, that I kind of lecture on to was, you know, that it's good luck and it's a few other things, but I think the main thing was, you're going in the right direction and you're on the right path. And I think that's what I needed to hear that day.
In that moment, it just felt like this very nice message from the universe. And then, you know, that was kind of how it all began.
Matt Whyte
So did that set you on the track of creating this whole world around the mantis, at least with the album cover? And I've seen all the Spotify visualizations with the mantis video.
Courtney Barnett
Yeah, kind of unintentionally, I, I didn't really mean for it to happen, but it just did. The the mantis image kind of became this recurring thing. And the day that I performed the album for the first time, you know, to an audience, I was walking to the venue to soundcheck, and there was a praying mantis on the path in front of me, and it was just, you know, small things like that, that, just felt really special.
And, and yeah, when it came time to do the album cover art, I kind of was like, no praying mantises. I don't want any more mantis imagery. But I was working with these great designers, and they found this amazing image by an artist called Lilo Hess. And strangely enough, she actually she moved from Germany to New York. And I think I think it was 1938, and she volunteered at the Natural History Museum.
So I love that even this, this interaction today is kind of connected in a really nice way.
Matt Whyte
I didn't mean, Courtney to pigeonhole you as having made a concept album. I, I think as a fan of prog rock, I see concept albums where maybe there are none. But when you listen to this music, and especially paired with the visualizer, I see it as a perfect marriage. Especially. There's another song on the record where the visualizer is right up close and you see how large those eyes are. “Mostly patient.”
Courtney Barnett
Oh, okay.
Matt Whyte
Yeah. And it says what's inside that cloudy little head. And those eyes are just so glazed over. And I'm like, this is a this is a mantis album. This has got to be a mantis album.
Courtney Barnett
Yeah. I mean, it's nice, it's nice when things connect in that way. And then from that song mantis, I had written the line creature of habit, which, you know, is just a phrase that I wrote in passing one morning when I was writing, and it was kind of more about my habits and my creative routine. And but then when I when I chose it later to be the album title, I thought, oh, that's so interesting because it, it does have such a layered, layered meaning.
And then when it's put next to something like the Praying Mantis, it's kind of so multi multi-layered, which, which I quite liked.
Matt Whyte
What Jessica, what would you identify as the most habitual behavior of the praying mantis?
Jessica Ware
I mean praying mantises in their adult stage really. They've just got to do two big things right eats. So they have enough food to mate so that they can reproduce. And and make babies. So patience is actually in a lot of folklore, people talk about praying mantises in the context of patience and stillness, because often what they're doing, they're actually incredibly smart.
That cloudy eyed head of theirs is, is holding a lot of ganglia, a lot of neurons and great vision. And they're just kind of doing this, waiting for food. But that's the thing that you see them the most. The creature of habit is waiting around to eat. I guess they're also looking for love. They do those two. Those are the two.
There are two habits is like serial relationships, some of which end in cannibalism and then looking for food.
Matt Whyte
That was the leading question I wanted you to deliver on. The 70% of females devour the male mate, is that correct?
Jessica Ware
It varies by species and it varies whether you have them in captivity or in the wild. It can be extreme. If they're really hungry, then the closest meal that's going to allow the female to nourish her eggs, to nourish her progeny. It's going to be the male that's right in front of her. Actually, I have a mantis right beside me right now that my student Lohit, he was mating them today.
And he said, maybe if you want, you know, you could take this and show it to Courtney because they're mating. Girl. There's only one mantis in this box. The male's gone.
Courtney Barnett
Whoa.
Jessica Ware
She’s eaten everything but the wings. So. No, no, I mean, sorry, I can't show you the mating because the mating ended and all that’s left are his wing buds, so.
Courtney Barnett
Wow. It is. It's definitely one of the main things that I knew in my basic knowledge of praying mantises. And it's often the first thing that people bring up is that kind of sexual cannibalism. That seems to be the fact that many people know.
Jessica Ware
I mean, I kind of love it if you turn it the other way around, right? Rather than it's that she's being like this femme fatale, right? She's like the ultimate mother, the ultimate provider.
Matt Whyte
Courtney, do you remember when you first looked up what that could perhaps have symbolized when you first saw it on the door frame? Do you remember where that originated? That idea of it symbolizing that you're on the right path?
Courtney Barnett
I remember I looked it up basically straight away, because I remember I took a just a really basic photo on my phone. I sent it to my girlfriend and she said, oh, look at look it up. You know, it means good luck or something. But yeah, I don't remember exactly where. It's just so there's there's so many.
Matt Whyte
What blew my mind is that in ancient Greece, the word mantis comes from the Greek word meaning prophet. I think mantis, however you pronounce it in Greek, is is prophet.
Jessica Ware
I think it's in the the Egyptian Book of the dead as well. I mean, this is something that guides you, you know, guides lost travelers home. And I think that that's like a common European perception, too. It's like a guide, although, I mean, it does vary as you go across cultures. I know in South Africa, then the sand people consider them, you know, mantises to be like a trickster god, maybe, maybe one of the creator gods.
But they're at trickster and they can maybe lead you astray or trick you. So I guess it kind of depends on which culture you go to. But for as long as there have been humans, there have always been mantises. Mantis has existed for 100, over 100 million years before we got on the scene. But for our entire existence there have been mantises.
So for the entire time of our early Neanderthal, Denisovan, you know, early homo, you know, relatives, they would have seen mantises. The oldest person in your lineage would have seen mantises, and we see mantises. So we all are interpreting it through the lens of our own time, I guess.
Courtney Barnett
It's so fascinating. I was wondering because I see I saw that they don't live very long. Right. Like maybe one year. What's their main kind of contribution to the world that they live in?
Jessica Ware
I mean, when you think about it in terms of how they affect the ecosystem, I guess, or how how humans are impacted by them, they really do this important job as top predators. So they are like regulators, like the community has all this biodiversity in it. And who gets to stay depends on on these top guys that are eating.
They're in the top trophic level and they're consuming the things in the lower trophic level. So praying mantises, in a lot of ways, I think are a sign of good luck, because humans know that if you have praying mantises, it means you have all the other community, which means you have a healthy, robust biodiversity. So they eat pretty much.
They meet each other. They're famous for being on flowers all the time. And people often say like, oh, that's so cool that they're sitting on flowers. Yeah, but they're sitting on flower is waiting for things that are pollinators to come so that they can eat them, because they know that pollinators come to flowers. So it's so smart, so predator predations kind of their gig.
And I think you're right, like part of their life is, is spent in this egg case. It's called an ootheca. So this female that just I should show you this. So I have this this this gal she's in here by herself now with these wing bits on the ground. She's about to lay an egg case. And that egg case, depending on the species, can live, you know, over winter.
So they can live longer than a year. But the adult stage is always pretty short. So in a lot of ways I think about that when when people make metaphors about mantises, I often think about it in the human context, like if we had a protracted adolescence that for our entire life was just the juvenile stage, and then we had four months to do to find a mate, get out there, disperse, eat a little bit of food.
That's a pretty short adult life to make all those important decisions.
Courtney Barnett
Yeah, it's not enough time, not enough time to get everything done.
Jessica Ware
I am fascinated to know what the mantis was that you saw in Joshua Tree. What color was it? Was it brown? Was it green?
Courtney Barnett
It was green.
Matt Whyte
Do you have the photo you sent your girlfriend that you could show us on your phone? If I'm not being too invasive?
Courtney Barnett
Good thinking.
Matt Whyte
I think, Jessica, you pointed this out when we chatted the other day. Like Courtney, having come from Australia, where you just have like the most gnarly wildlife crawling all around that I would assume be desensitized to wild looking insects showing up.
Courtney Barnett
I mean, yeah, we do have some, we do have some wild things, but I don't know, there's something. So there's something so unique about the praying mantis. Some of them, they look, they look unbelievable. They look made up like they've been created or drawn.
Jessica Ware
Yeah, it's almost comical because they. And I think in Australia, you guys have like 120 species or something like that, whereas where you would have been Joshua Tree, maybe there's 20 or something like that. So you kind of already came from an area where you were saturated with mantises. But whether you go like as you go across the globe, mantises have converged to do these certain body types.
So some of them look like grass, some of them look like sticks, some of them look like leaves, but they're not necessarily each other's closest relatives. It's evolved multiple times, like, hey, if I look like grass, people won't see me, birds won't see me, and I'll survive. If I look in this environment like a leaf, then I'm probably going to make it to pass on my genes to the next generation.
So that's kind of happened like multiple times. So when you go to a new area, you go to Australia or you go to the southwest of USA, you're going to see, oh, there's the grass type, the leaf type, the dead leaf type. Oh, I'm in Australia now. There's a grass type of leaf type a dead leaf type. It's kind of cool.
That's evolved multiple times because that's pretty remarkable. They can look so incredibly similar, but they don't share a common ancestor. In many cases.
Matt Whyte
They don't?
Jessica Ware
Because it's evolved multiple times in different lineages to camouflage. Camouflage is a powerful thing.
Courtney Barnett
And they just and they adapt. They adapt to the space that they're around.
Jessica Ware
Yeah, over a long periods of time. Mantises are pretty old. So some of them have are in all the continents. Some of them are on some of the continent, some of them evolved when the continents were smushed together into a southern big giant southern continent and a big northern continent laurasia and gondwana. So they've moved around.
Matt Whyte
Can you back up? I don't know, like before, before the land masses broke apart, what were the names?
Jessica Ware
There was one giant landmass, Pangaea, and it started breaking apart into fragments. And the initially it broke into a northern one, which became, you know, Canada and Europe and nation. And then there was a southern one, which was South America, Africa, parts of Australia was attached there for part of it, and Antarctica. And that Gondwanaland was it moved kind of around, but it was generally south of LA.
And so a lot of times you have taxa that are found in both Europe and North America, but it's not because they're moving across the ocean. That's because they evolved when those two continents were together before they broke apart. And then the species just traveled with the continents as they broke apart into North America and Eurasia.
Matt Whyte
So how would a how would a green, a green one end have ended up in Joshua Tree? Like, is that to suggest that there was grass in Joshua Tree once? Is that the idea?
Jessica Ware
Well, some of them that I have more like a general kind of just a general green, greenish or brownish color. You know, they're not really trying to look like anything in particular. It's just got the general mantis gestalt, you know. And then there are others that are hyper camouflage.
Courtney Barnett
I found a I found my one.
Matt Whyte
Oh good.
Courtney Barnett
So I was looking there's the pallet palo verde tree behind it. And it's quite similar. You know, like even if this praying mantis was on that tree, it would, it would blend right in.
Matt Whyte
Is the bark of the tree green?
Courtney Barnett
Yeah.
Jessica Ware
And they don't I mean, in a lot of cases they look a lot like the habitat that they're on, but they're also pretty fast movers. Like, I just took this, this chunky gal out. The one who just ate her mate. Here she is. And she looks, in general, a lot like a leaf. But it's not a perfect match, right?
I mean, evolution is pretty good, but it's not. Wow. It's not like it would be exactly identical. You or I could probably tell this is a mantis. And this is not a leaf that's walking on my head. She has these kind of spots on the inside of her legs. You see those kind of red spots? The kind of red bar right there.
And when she's startled, then she can do a pose that makes it look like it's a flash of color, which can startle an animal that's coming towards her. She's so beautiful.
Courtney Barnett
They look so fragile.
Jessica Ware
They really do. But they're pretty robust. I mean, her legs are full of these spines, and they do tend to be kind of really focused. And they're going when you see them moving, which is, you know, more commonly they're sitting and waiting for food. They sit and wait predators. But when you see them moving, they're usually moving with determination in a certain direction.
I think that would give if I was an ancient Egyptian and I saw this, I would think, yeah, this is probably going in a certain direction. Maybe it's going home, which is like such a common folklore for people to think about.
Matt Whyte
Where's that one from?
Jessica Ware
This one's from Asia. This is a Timor mantis.
Courtney Barnett
And there's no, no danger or anything for a human to pick it up. Like there's no it wouldn't bite you or anything like that.
Jessica Ware
I mean, I would love to see her try her mouth parts are really small, you know, like, go ahead, girl, go for it. It won't do anything to me. But her legs have spines on them because they use their legs. They're called raptorial forelegs. They bend part of their legs down, which gives them the praying appearance and their spines on this side and spines on this side.
So if a food item kind of comes by, they can kind of like grab it like this. And so if that touches you, it feels pokey. And that sometimes startles people. But they have no venom. They don't bite you intentionally, even if they tried. Their mouthparts are so tiny it wouldn't do anything. And they're really the good guys to have around.
Because like you said in the beginning, some people call it luck. I would say it's like a sign of a healthy ecosystem, because in order for there to be praying mantises, there has to be enough of all the other great insects for them to be able to have food.
Courtney Barnett
So they get rid of all the bad bugs that are on things.
Jessica Ware
Yeah, they eat flies.
Matt Whyte
I wanted to include this fun fact that in popular culture. There's a Godzilla style movie from the 50s called The Deadly Mantis, which was directed by an Australian who later went on to earn marginally more fame by directing his high concept piece attack of the 50ft Woman.
Jessica Ware
Both are hits.
Matt Whyte
Are they actually hits? I think I was being facetious. Yeah.
Jessica Ware
There's this there's an insect film Fear Festival that's been held for 30 or 40 years. I think I forget how long. At the University of Illinois and they that's the mantis one has been one of the ones that they've had in this insect film film. Fear festival or Fear Film Festival. I feel like maybe all maybe it's just an entomologist thing, but I think we all know the mantis movie.
Courtney Barnett
I've definitely seen I've seen an image of the cover, maybe kind of through my research. I feel like I've seen seen lots of yeah, it's a really great poster. Film poster.
Jessica Ware
Well here's one. Do you think that's right? I mean, what do you think about the fact that those two movies that led this person to fame both involve maybe misunderstood apprehension or fear of a powerful female protagonist? Right. Because the female praying mantis I feel like is mischaracterized. And perhaps the attack of the 50ft woman, as I I've seen the movie a long time ago, but, I mean, she was just trying to make it in the world the same way the praying mantis is just trying to make it.
Courtney Barnett
It's really playing on the stereotype. Yeah, I never I never saw that saw that film. What is the the closest, kind of species to the praying mantis?
Jessica Ware
We debated we the royal we, the scientific community debated this for a really long time because people couldn't figure it out. They thought maybe it was like grasshoppers and crickets, and then they thought maybe it was stick insects because it was like a lot like it. And some people thought maybe it was termites and some people thought it was cockroaches.
And then in 2007, 2008, there was a bunch of us that wrote papers with molecular data, and we showed that cockroaches are actually include termites, and termites are just fancy social cockroaches, and they're the sister to mantises. So it was actually very dramatic for the scientific community. The paper there was this paper that came out from Europe and it was called death of an order because Isoptera was an order.
It was like the termites. It was its own group of insects. Death of an order. Very dramatic, because now it was just a cockroach. And these cockroaches are sister to praying mantises. And what's cool is it they both lay an egg case. So this gal that's beside me, she's working and she's going to make an egg case soon, I think they're called an ootheca.
And cockroaches also make an ootheca. So they do have like things that are similar even though they look different having legs like this versus legs like this. Being social, not being social, being predatory, being scavengers. But they do have some like shared derived characteristics, like the way that their eggs are.
Matt Whyte
Death of an order. Sounds like something you would have written. I know you're a metal fan, Jessica.
Jessica Ware
I know actually there probably is nothing more metal than to study. Like there's a lot of people who study very pretty insects, and it's great. It's kind of like there's a lot of people who have, you know, butterfly tattoos, but I feel like it's a real metal thing to have, like an earwig tattoo or to study praying mantises or to have praying mantises in your songs, like, it's not like you're talking about a beautiful dancing butterfly.
You're talking about something that will eat the face off of something else. Like, that's pretty metal. I love that.
Matt Whyte
Face melting.
Jessica Ware
Yeah.
Matt Whyte
Jessica, can we do a little mantis 101? Are you able to show us a specimen? You could give us a little tour of its biology.
Jessica Ware
Yeah. So, humans, all we've ever done for as long as there have been humans is sort things into categories. This looks like this. This looks like this. This looks like this. That's all we do for our job. That's basically what we do at the museum, right? We sort things. We call it taxonomy or classification. We give it all these names, but we're basically just grouping like things with like so all the things, all the insects are grouped together because they have six legs.
They have a head, a thorax and abdomen. So that's what praying mantises have. Praying mantises all have a head which is right here, which is the eyes. It mostly looks like eyes. They have a thorax, which in praying mantises is kind of long. And then they have an abdomen. They all have two sets of wings because they're in this group called Pterygota or the winged insects.
Ptery means wing. Some insects have lost their wings like fleas don't have wings. Head lice don't have wings because they don't. They've kind of don't need them. But praying mantises have wings. And what's cool is that they're for wings. The front wings are kind of modified into something called a tag Mina. It's kind of leathery and tough, and the hind wings are just like a regular wing.
It has a bunch of little wing vanes there, and they kind of fold. So when the mantis is at rest, it puts its leathery top wings over the back ones to protect it. So it kind of can fly or glide with these hind wings because they're really bendy and they've got all these wing veins and stuff like that.
But then this top one is like a protective cover, so it kind of goes over top of the delicate hindwing. And then like I said, all insects have six legs. They're hexa pods, hexa pota six legs. So they have hind legs. This is kind of hard to get this focus with this camera. There's the measles the middle legs and then there's the fore legs, the front legs.
For most insects the front legs are like not really part of the story. They're usually rinky dink and their tiny and they don't really do anything. And for most insects the hind leg is like kind of what people talk about except for the mantises. Because look at that. The the fore leg is huge and all legs and insects have six segments.
There's a coxa and a trochanter which are kind of like the joint where it's attached to the thorax. And then they have a femur, just like we have a femur, you know, our thigh bone. And then they have a tibia and then they have a tarsus. And what they've done is they've kind of taken their tibia and their tarsus and turned it into, into this.
So the fore legs, the front legs are like kind of remarkable. And then those fore legs we call that raptorial because they use it to, to catch prey with. And it's full of spines. And different types of praying mantises have more spines, some have less spines. The patterns of the spines is kind of a big part of their story.
And over evolutionary time you see the heft, I guess, and size and specialization of the spine gets more complex as you go towards more recently derived species. And so praying mantises are kind of cool because all of the features that they have are the reflection, I guess, of of millions of years of selection, right selection on good vision to see the prey that they need to see.
They can see a lot of interesting colors and they can perceive a lot with their with their own material, with their eyes. Their legs are kind of modified so they can be really good at hunting, and their wings are modified so the hindwing can glide and the front wing can kind of protect it because they're moving in and amongst vegetation, and otherwise their wings would get kind of torn up and broken.
Their egg cases themselves are kind of modified to be cryptic, so that a bird doesn't come along and just eat their cases. Like there's a lot of things that have happened that have been like the buildup of natural selection of a really long period of time. So when you look at that praying mantis on your door, Jem, right, that you saw after your coffee, you're actually kind of looking at the product, right, of millions of years of evolution, just hanging just hanging out there.
No biggie. I'm just super specialized and able to survive in this habitat in the way that nothing else can. But here it is.
Courtney Barnett
What about it's, So it's sight is probably a strength. Does it does it hear or feel vibrations or.
Jessica Ware
That's a good question. So people thought that maybe they didn't hear. And then I guess it was probably about 20 years ago now, someone discovered that there are some mantises that can hear. They have a cyclopean ear cyclops, because it's only on one side, they only have one ear, they don't have two, and it allows them to hear vibrations.
And the fact that we only just found that someone only just found that out 20 years ago is not surprising, because there's so many insects and there's so few relative to the number of species, so few entomologists, there's still a lot of discovery to be made.
Courtney Barnett
I mean, that's good to know because I did I did stand and talk to that mantis for a little while, which I was like, if if anyone is is watching this moment, it must be so strange. But I was by myself and I was talking to it.
Matt Whyte
Would you care to share any part of your dialog?
Courtney Barnett
I think the first thing I said to it was, that I'm not going to hurt you. I think I said you're safe here. It just felt like such a special moment. I was really kind of taken away by it. But yeah, I said it was safe, and I and I, and I said I was I was grateful that it was there and there.
The main things that I, that I remember.
Matt Whyte
I'm super curious, how do you what kind of tools do you need to actually take apart a praying mantis, shoulder? That level of dissection like that blows my mind. And earlier you talked about counting their neurons. I wouldn't even know where to begin with that one. Yeah.
Jessica Ware
Well, I mean, thankfully, we have really high powered microscopes and x rays here at the museum. So you can take this little guy and put it in a computer. They call it like a computed tomography machine or a CT scanner. And it can basically kind of like when you get an x ray, right, it can scan through the whole body, including the brain, which is not really a centralized brain, just more like clusters of ganglia and clusters of nerves.
And you can kind of try and reconstruct that. You can do dissections though of very, very we have it sounds silly to say that we just use very small instruments. So they're very small. So we just use really tiny, like just very tiny scissors and very tiny scalpels.
Matt Whyte
You would need like a surgeon's hand.
Jessica Ware
Yeah. I think it helps if you have a steady hand for sure. And one of my graduate students, low Heat Garrick, a party. He works on praying mantises, and he had to dissect out some genitals. And we often the genitals of praying mantises are very sclerotized, meaning that they're hard and they're coated. They're kind of made up of a type of chitin, which is what makes up their skin.
It's very, very hard and tough, and it's covered by surrounding kind of fleshy tissue. And so you have to digest it in a chemical solution. And then it's like quite complicated. And I'm always impressed when people do a great job. And he did a great job because the praying mantis genitals tell a lot of their story. Right. That actually is selected for in a kind of dramatic way, to have certain types of parts that fit together from one species to the next.
But yeah, the trick is to have really tiny scissors.
Matt Whyte
Do you think we could an we, can we take a little peek it? Mantis genitals? Or is that tawdry?
Jessica Ware
Yeah, it might be hard to see, considering I had a hard time just showing you the wing with this camera. But maybe I can send some photos. Yeah, it's kind of not.
Matt Whyte
I mean, that all looks like genitals to me.
Jessica Ware
Well, right there on segment nine and ten, which you. Which is too fuzzy. I'll have to send you a photo. But there's there's some naughty bits there. And they are some of them are external and some of them are internal.
Matt Whyte
And do they mate the same way us folk do?
Jessica Ware
Usually the male is on the back of the female and the genitals are kind of attached. They stay attached for a really long time. I guess that's maybe unlike us, because the, you know, there's there's a lot of stuff that happens for the sperm to be transferred. I'm trying to see. Maybe I can show you in this, in this gal here, there's in this, this female, the the male that she was mating with was much smaller than her.
And so he was kind of like resting maybe on her side because he's not as long to go all the way up to here. So he was kind of resting on her side with his genitals attached into her genitals right there. And they can stay like that for quite some time. And then either she eats him or he dismounts and kind of scurries off to where he ever he needs to go.
And she's really chunky. Look like her abdomen is like head, thorax, abdomen. Remember that's her 101, right? They all have a head, a thorax and abdomen. Her abdomen is really big and swollen because she's gravid or aka pregnant. So she's going to lay an egg case soon.
Courtney Barnett
How soon after does that happen?
Jessica Ware
She might lay one tToday. She might lay one day at least this weekend, I would hope.
Courtney Barnett
Wow. Yeah. How many, how many babies come out of the the that egg casing.
Jessica Ware
So it varies by the species. Some there's 50, some there's hundred. Some those hundreds. Kind of various. These are the, the wings of the male that was in there with her. She just. Poor guy. The wings to the side and ate the body. So what's cool about praying mantis eggs is I think that they're just really robust in a lot of cases, especially for North America, like probably the one that you saw, like if it was able to go out and find a mate and do what it needed to do.
It can lay egg cases that can then overwinter. And then once it's warm in the spring, then they hatch. And that I had that happen to me. Actually, I had got a Christmas tree that had a praying mantis eggcase in it, which was a native species that overwinter. But when I brought the Christmas tree in, I didn't know it had a praying mantis egg case in it.
The heat of my house was sending it that signal. It was cold Now it's warm, must be spring. And the oothica hatched and I had baby mantises all over my house. What was for them? Because it was Christmas. But that does happen. Like they're very good at kind of telling time with temperature.
Courtney Barnett
I wonder if the one I saw was a male or female. I wonder if you can tell from the photo.
Jessica Ware
I mean, I don't I didn't really see like a scale. It's hard to know the scale, but the size that I was imagining it being from your photo, I would have said A female.
Courtney Barnett
Is there any other insects that do that like eat eat their mate afterwards?
Jessica Ware
Oh yeah. I mean, yeah, it happens all the time. It's like, yeah, spiders do it. And I mean dragonflies don't do it per se, but dragonflies eat each other all the time. So once they've there, the weather, they're mating. As soon as they clasp your fair game, you're no longer a friend. You could either be foe or food.
Those are the options. There's some insects that have kind of gotten around that, where instead the male will give what's called a nuptial gift. So they'll actually produce like a little packet of protein that they'll give to the female upon mating. And then she'll eat that. And there's lots of, there's some stick insects that do that. There's some grasshoppers that do that.
There's flies famously. There's flies that do that where they actually carry these little nuptial sacs when they go in their swarms. And there are some males that have learned to game the system where they basically picture it kind of like if you had like a bandana and you laid it out, and then you took the four corners and you kind of have it here, right?
It's like a little balloon that's full of the protein. They've gamed the system, so they make a really big sack, but they actually don't fill it with anything. And the females pick the males that have the biggest gifts. But sometimes the gift is empty and.
Courtney Barnett
She gets.
Matt Whyte
The switch.
Courtney Barnett
Wow.
Jessica Ware
I have a question. Did you do you think that you were inspired in terms of. We talked a little bit about the lyrics, but in terms of the melody and the sound, did any of the chord changes or progressions, did any of that come from the movement or because I, I was trying to imagine it as I was listening to it like a mantis, I could kind of picture the mantis kind of moving around because I knew it, because I had heard from that talking to Matt that, you know, that you had you had seen one which kind of led to this.
And so I was trying to picture like as, as you were going through the melody, the kind of mantis moving around. Do you think about that when you're thinking about the melody? Or does the melody just come to you and the lyrics come second?
Courtney Barnett
I think that in this case, it was a lot of that. The music and the kind of melody and the chords had already been written. Yeah, that those lyrics especially were, were later. But that's a really interesting thought and it's hard to know, like, I think that maybe some of that, like you were saying that the kind of that idea of patience or them being quite still and, and patient, I mean, I'm sure that that kind of worked its way in.
And I hadn't even thought of the inside your cloudy little head lyric, which which you were mentioning before. But it wasn't it wasn't referencing that. But it's interesting how it kind of comes around and it and you can kind of relate it back. Yeah.
Matt Whyte
Super cool. Thank you both so much. It's such an honor to to share this this hour with you both.
Courtney Barnett
I feel like I've, I've learned so much, I really have.
Matt Whyte
Yeah. Are you going to be in you're coming to going through New York, right. You're on tour.
Courtney Barnett
Yes. Next month I think.
Jessica Ware
Yeah. Well, you're always welcome. You should come and we'll show you the mantis collection if you're interested. Come by the museum.
Courtney Barnett
And I would love that. Yes, I would love that. And and same goes if you want to come to the show, you're more than welcome.
Jessica Ware
Thank you.
Matt Whyte
Be sure to check out Courtney's latest album, Creature of Habit, and you can catch her on tour this spring. For more information, please visit her website https://www.courtneybarnett.com.au/
You can learn more about Jessica's work by visiting the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and by checking out her staff profile page at https://www.amnh.org/research/staff-directory/jessica-ware
Sing for science is co-produced by Talkhouse and made possible in part by a grant from the Simons Foundation. Our music is by Panoram. Social media director and video editor is Bailey Constas and our digital producer is Keenan Kush. If you like sing for science. The best way you can support us is to give us a review. Tell a friend about the show and subscribe on your podcast platform of choice.
For more information, please visit singforscience.org and follow us on social media @singforscience. Thanks for listening.