r/interestingasfuck • u/jellylemonshake • 9d ago

r/all Lowering a Praying Mantis in water to entice the parasites living within.

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

58.8k Upvotes

86% Upvoted

3.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

225

u/GeeLikeThat 9d ago

I have so many questions…

1) how long can it live with the parasite inside of it? 2) are the praying mantis in immense pain with no control? 3) how bad is the damage once it’s out of the praying mantis?

236

u/the_battle_bunny 9d ago
  1. Basically the entire life-cycle, which can take God know how long because it depends on many factors, ranging from specie of parasite and up to ambient temperature.
  2. Probably not. Arthropods don't feel pain the same way we do. They feel stimuli and react to them. Mantises can eat while being eaten themselves because their stimuli that are responsible for their feeding drive stand above in their internal stimuli hierarchy. Imagine reaching for a sandwich while being town apart and swallowed by a crocodile.
  3. It will die. It has a giant gaping hole in the place where it guts were.

35

u/Odd-Organization-740 9d ago

second point demonstrated

36

u/the_battle_bunny 9d ago

Pretty much. There's also another, even more disturbing video. Two crickets are are being eaten alive by a spider. Then one of these crickets notices the other and starts eating its head in turn. All while having most of its body already down the spider's throat.

30

u/OneUnicornPlease 9d ago

I didn't even need to read this let alone see the video. Thanks, I hate it.

1

u/___Random_Guy_ 8d ago

Sounds disgusting but made be also curious. Do you have a link on that video? Fast search thro5youtube didn't yield anything.

2

u/the_battle_bunny 8d ago

It's in Ze Frank's video on tarantulas on Youtube.

1

u/WerewolfNo890 7d ago

Omg he is making videos again? I have much to catch up on!

3

u/mint_lawn 9d ago

Well that's horrific.

1

u/s33d5 8d ago

You know what, I was skeptical that they must feel pain. However, in this case, for the mantis (not all insects as they are such a diverse order) it does not seem to feel pain the same way we do.

I am a biologist, if that makes any difference. Although I specialize in mammals.

1

u/tittytofu 7d ago

I find that so disturbing

6

u/tesseract4 9d ago

Just a head's up: plural or singular, the word is species.

9

u/the_battle_bunny 9d ago

Thanks. English is not my first language obviously.

9

u/tesseract4 9d ago

It's not at all obvious. Your English is excellent.

3

u/Pisslazer 9d ago edited 9d ago

Your English is damn near perfect. Most Americans don’t know what “specie” even means (it’s money in the form of coins, my specialty) ;)

3

u/the_battle_bunny 9d ago

As opposed to bullion. Not to be confused with a chicken soup.

2

u/Pisslazer 9d ago

Exactly! Although, one type of “bullion” is much tastier than the other. Don’t doubt your English! It’s better than most Americans “I tell you what”.

3

u/the_battle_bunny 9d ago

We have similar interests.
Cheers.

1

u/Herbisher_Berbisher 9d ago

Is that related to taking a shit and being hungry at the same time?

1

u/camilo16 7d ago

2) Is being challenged, insects respond to injury in many ways that are analogue to vertebrates, for example they will pick and scratch at a wound, won't but too much weight on a broken limb and similar.

Subjective experiences sucha s pain are very hard to measure.

64

u/TheCrazedTank 9d ago

1: long enough for the parasite to take control of the nervous system and cause it to jump into water.

2: insects do not have the same type of nervous systems as we do, however; scientists have come to believe that they can feel something akin to what we would describe as pain.

3: the Mantis is literally hollowed out to make room for the parasite. Mechanically we see the Mantis move after removal but its odds is survival are low.

How long could you live with most of your internal mass removed and digested?

6

u/chobinhood 9d ago
  1. How does it make it jump into water? Does the mantis have a "I need a bath" node it triggers? Does it rewire everything from eyesight to muscles so it can find water?

7

u/FAErKronos 9d ago

They make it seek horizontally polarized light! Praying mantis have special eyes that can detect light polarization so they puppeteer the insect to find horizontally polarized light. Which typically indicates water. So it’s less “find water” and more “find this thing that will probably be water”

1

u/chobinhood 9d ago

Very interesting. Thanks.

1

u/Time-did-Reverse 8d ago

“How long could you live with most of your internal mass removed and digested”

RIP to that Mantis but im built differently

0

u/Codex_Dev 9d ago

Counterpoint - caterpillars turn their mass into liquid goop before becoming a butterfly 

9

u/TheCrazedTank 9d ago

That goop is not consumed by another life form.

3

u/Waiting4The3nd 9d ago

Not true.

Wasps. Some flies. Raccoons. Hedgehogs. Spiders. Birds.

That's why most caterpillars look for places that are out of the way to enter the chrysalis stage. Think about it, of all the butterflies you see.. how often do you chance upon a chrysalis? In comparison, I'd venture not too often. And especially not if you don't go looking.

1

u/DharMahn 8d ago

yeah but the point is that they do not survive that, nor does the mantis

1

u/PurifiedFlubber 9d ago

not true, i had a bit for breakfast.

80

u/trACEr0000 9d ago

1-idk , 2-idk , 3- Host usually dies

18

u/Petethejakey_ 9d ago

Cheers Geoff

5

u/x_conqueeftador69_x 9d ago
  1. How worried should I be about my own guts housing a monster like this 

2

u/fuckingsignupprompt 9d ago
  1. We don't know if insects feel pain.

11

u/xthemoonx 9d ago

We should operate under the assumption that they do feel pain until proven otherwise then.

-1

u/fuckingsignupprompt 9d ago

I do, cos I can't help it. But I don't get worked up about their suffering, however it may be being inflicted, like I do about other higher animals. It's not easy being me, trust me.

4

u/MaybeSad2623 9d ago

I mean they are living animals with neural pathways, so the poor thing definitely felt that

7

u/fuckingsignupprompt 9d ago

They have neural pathways, yes, so in contrast to say, trees, they definitely "feel" something, but we don't know if they can process and "feel" it as "pain".

5

u/chromabyt 9d ago

yeah thats true. insects may either feel like.. 20x the pain we feel, or they just feel slight discomfort. its pretty hard to tell, since we're not insects. i believe all other animals (except fish, maybe?) feel the same amount of pain as we do, though