A few people show interest in insects and keep praying mantis as pets, hoping these tiny creatures can recognize them as owners, but insects behave differently than animals.
Can a Praying Mantis Recognize Humans? Praying mantis can recognize humans after frequent interactions, as they can detect through body odors and stereo vision. Moreover, they can also detect voice tones and faces and feel affection or care provided to them. They react aggressively when a new person tries to come closer but feel happy to see their owner.
A mutual relationship of trust and understanding develops between humans and praying mantis over time, as these insects do not consider you prey and avoid attacks until they feel threatened.
How can a praying mantis recognize humans?
Praying mantis are smart creatures with simpler brains, excellent vision, and the ability to differentiate between two different people using their eyes and sense of smell.
Better vision
Praying mantis have an amazing vision as their bulging compound eyes possess a large number of ommatidia that protrude outward from their head.
Moreover, they have a wide field of vision, allowing them to see at long distances and perceive depth efficiently. Each photoreceptor captures a small part of an object and creates a large image.
The image looks like a mosaic, which can help these insects to see movements in their surrounding areas and keep themselves aware of the changes.
This amazing stereoscopic vision allows them to see humans and recognize them accurately. They can distinguish between two different people by looking at their bodies and face.
In addition, their eyes have fovea centralis, which can be considered a depression in the eye’s retina. Visual acuity is higher in this region due to the concentration of light receptors.
Accordingly, they can efficiently focus on images and determine the differences in facial features of two different persons when they see one of them frequently.
Frequent interactions
They recognize humans, which leads to forming a strong bond with a particular person when they see each other daily.
Moreover, they can also feel affection towards people by considering them a food source because humans usually get closer to pets when they want to feed pets.
They can identify their owners from a distance and show happiness by body movement or other means because they begin to understand they are going to get food.
You can visit the wild praying mantis in a cage to develop a bond because they need frequent interaction to get accustomed to a particular person.
Accordingly, they do not react aggressively when they recognize humans as their friends posing no threat to their survival, but it can take several days or even a few weeks.
Body odors
Insects lack complex cognitive abilities to recognize a human as they only rely on their senses to detect movements and body odors for identification purposes.
Their sense of smell is not so strong, like ants, but they can still use their antennae equipped with multiple smell receptors to detect different odors.
Moreover, their antennae are sensitive to the slightest scent and differentiate them as pleasant and unpleasant. They relate pleasant odors with food and unpleasant odors with predators.
They can detect the body odor of humans if they are wearing a beautiful scent and relate these odors with people’s entry.
These insects begin to recognize body odors over time and relate them to a particular person, so they do not feel threatened if they smell a specific odor after getting accustomed to it.
However, they react aggressively and attack people if their smell receptors do not recognize the body odor and their eyes are not familiar with the person.
Acknowledge voice tone
Praying mantis possess an ear present in the middle region of their abdomen, allowing them to hear sounds or feel human voices when people talk to them.
Their ear is sensitive to sounds of frequency ranging between 25 to 45 Kilohertz, while humans usually produce voices of frequency less than this limit.
A screaming person can produce a sound of frequency 3 Kilohertz, so it seems their voice is not audible to insects as they can only detect loud noises.
In addition, they can only detect the sound of bats and ultrasound because their ear captures high-frequency sounds, but we cannot hear ultrasounds.
However, these insects can detect vibrations of sounds in the air and use them to detect their predators when they get closer to their bodies.
Feel affection and care
Praying mantis can feel affection and emotions because their simpler brains can process some basic emotions, like happiness, fear, sadness, love, and anger.
However, they cannot feel complex emotions like love and jealousy, so they can respond to humans without aggressiveness if they get comfort.
Their happiness relates to plenty of food and lack of threat, and they develop affection for people providing suitable shelter and desired food, like crickets.
They do not bite at hands, and consider them friends if people are not responsible for posing any kind of threat to these tiny insects.
So, they can recognize us by relating them to past experiences and respond accordingly, as they show happiness or aggressiveness according to their behavior.
How do praying mantis interact with humans?
These insects recognize humans by using their eyes and sending body odors and respond to their actions in different ways, as they show happiness if you bring food to them.
They show excitement and joy by interacting with the owners and trying to get closer to them. Some insects play with them by hopping on their hands and moving from one hand to another.
In addition, they can also jump on their shoulders to express their feeling of happiness and try to get closer to you. They move actively and attain a relaxing posture on their hands.
However, they can also respond aggressively if the humans are responsible for causing damage to their bodies and try to pinch their bodies to pick them.
You have to deal with their bodies gently as they can consider this picking behavior as a threat and begin to bite on the fingers.
At what age can a praying mantis recognize humans?
Baby praying mantis are not mature enough to recognize their owners by differentiating their facial features and identifying the vibrations of varying voice tones.
Their cognitive abilities are not advanced to recognize you like other people usually see each other and identify minor differences in appearance and behaviors.
The photoreceptors of nymphs or babies are still in developmental stages, so they cannot see clearly like adult insects but can still find prey.
Insects consider all humans as same because their vision relies on a large number of photoreceptors that can produce a blurred image as each optical unit amplifies different parts of an image.
The nymphs take around 2 to 3 months to become an adult, so they can see people around them and identify their behaviors after this time period.
Only the adult praying mantis can somewhat recognize their owners because their compound eyes develop properly after completing developmental stages.
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