{"id":185,"date":"2009-09-25T08:54:13","date_gmt":"2009-09-25T12:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/?p=185"},"modified":"2009-09-25T08:54:13","modified_gmt":"2009-09-25T12:54:13","slug":"la-mantide-religiosa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/la-mantide-religiosa\/","title":{"rendered":"La Mantide Religiosa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"justify\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;font-family: Verdana\">September is the time of year when we start noticing <strong>le mantidi religiose<\/strong> (the praying mantises), which are very common here in Italy. I had always wondered why they seemed to appear so late in the year, and where they arrived from, but a quick investigation revealed the simple fact that they are already present from about May or June, when they hatch out of their <strong>ooteche<\/strong> (a kind of hard cocoon containing up to 200 eggs), but are simply too small and too well <strong>camuffate<\/strong> (camouflaged) to be easily seen.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;font-family: Verdana\">Le Mantidi religiose take their name from the fact that they keep their two powerful front legs folded before them in an attitude of prayer in preparation for a lightning strike on their <strong>preda<\/strong> (prey). Their leafy green coloring, and plant like shape enables them to <strong>camuffarsi<\/strong> (camouflage themselves) easily amongst the foliage as they patiently await an unsuspecting <strong>mosca<\/strong> (fly) or other small insect. They are able to rotate their strange alien like head through 180 degrees in order to detect their <strong>pasto<\/strong> (meal), and when the opportune moment arrives their <strong>zampe anteriori<\/strong> (front legs), which are armed with sharp spines, spring out to grab the unsuspecting prey, which has the pleasure of being eaten alive.<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;font-family: Verdana\">But the worst is yet to come. Let\u2019s just say that the mating habits of le mantidi leave a lot to be desired, and if you want to know exactly what they get up to you will have to do a bit of homework and translate this!:<\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;font-family: Verdana\"><strong>L&#8217;accoppiamento delle mantidi \u00e8 caratterizzato da cannibalismo: la femmina, dopo essersi accoppiata, o anche durante l&#8217;atto, divora il maschio partendo dalla testa mentre gli organi genitali proseguono nell&#8217;accoppiamento. Questo comportamento \u00e8 dovuto al bisogno di proteine nella rapida produzione di uova; prova ne sia che la femmina allevata in cattivit\u00e0, essendo ben nutrita, spesso &#8220;risparmia&#8221; il maschio.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\"><span style=\"font-size: x-small;font-family: Verdana\"><strong>Buon appetito!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>September is the time of year when we start noticing le mantidi religiose (the praying mantises), which are very common here in Italy. I had always wondered why they seemed to appear so late in the year, and where they arrived from, but a quick investigation revealed the simple fact that they are already present&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"post-item__readmore\"><a class=\"btn btn--md\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/la-mantide-religiosa\/\">Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[619],"tags":[770],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","hentry","category-italian-language","tag-la-mantide-religiosa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}