Big brutal-looking praying mantis (R. valida) [Inferion7]

Rhombodera valida

Species was described in 1838 by H. Burmeister. Species name valida means strong. Rhombodera cf. valida is a scientific name of a green big mantis species originally found in Asia. This species is slightly bigger than Sphodromantis lineola, but S. lineola is much more brutal or offensive, even able to kill anything that has the same size. R. valida eats grasshoppers, crickets, locusts, other mantids, phasmids, cockroaches (except B. dubia) or another insect. This species is the biggest and the most massive mantis species I’ve ever had but as I mentioned S. lineola is a slightly bigger warrior.

In this video, you can see an adult female and also an adult male at the end of this video. Mating attempts were unsuccessful because the male was not interested. Anyway you see handling this species that can be harmful sometimes (at the beginning I dropped her because she seemed to bite me) and after a while, she was calmer and she cleaned her raptorial leg instead of biting me.

There’s a detailed macro view of cleaning her raptorial leg, I find it mysterious, almost alien-like and also brutal, this species is very strong but not as aggressive as S. lineola.

Music was composed by me, I have a digital piano Yamaha NP-V80 piaggero. I work with the following software: Audacity, Sony Vegas Pro 13, Magix Music Maker 2014. I've been playing on the piano since July 2012.

Visit my main YouTube channel "Marek Kučera" about animals (especially tarantulas, chameleons and others) or my second channel "Marek Kučera [Inferion7] - Music" about music and piano.