It was while exploring Banteay Kdei temple ruins when I first saw a Praying Mantis out in the wild. While this is no big deal to many people, we don’t have those in Canada so I was pretty excited to have spotted it there and gotten a chance to take pictures.
This little bug was trying to look inconspicuous by sitting on a stone heated by the sun. Unfortunately, I only had my wide angle lens with me so the chances of taking a decent close up picture of it were nonexistent. Having had no previous experience with Praying Mantises, I didn’t know how vicious they were with humans.
Even though I didn’t have appropriate lens on my camera, I still wanted to take at least some pictures of it but with wide angle lens on, the only way get it was by shoving the camera in its face (even then too broad of an area would be captured, but that’s all I could do). But what are Praying Mantises capable of? Will it jump on my hand when I get too close and bite? I didn’t know for sure so I kept what I considered a safe distance.
I’ve seen many more Praying Mantises since and never had any of them attempt to attack me so I’m guessing my concerns were unfounded. I even had Praying Mantises spring out of the grass and land on my leg on a few occasions but there’s never been any attempt to bite me or anything of sort. So I guess after some experience with those I can safely assume that although Praying Mantises are pretty vicious with insects they feed on, when it comes to objects much larger in size, they play it nice.
