Praying Mantis

I caught a praying mantis last night on a leaf of one of the very few plants I have in my garden. Not knowing much about this unique species of insects, I feared it would consume the little sunflower seedlings I had painstakingly planted in my garden and which I had cared for for about a month now.

I put it together with a few wet leaves into a little carrier bag punched with a few tiny holes overnight and this morning, freed it into one of the secondary jungles in Shah Alam. I stopped my car by the side of the road, right in front of a police road block and surprised the many policemen there when I walked out with the carrier bag.

"Apa tu?!" (What is that?!) They exclaimed.

"Oh, mentadak mentadu" (praying mantis), I explained.

"Boleh goreng, makan..." (you could fry it and eat it), they replied.

Fry and eat a praying mantis?! Unthinkable!


With my curiosity quite aroused, I later researched this very interesting insect from the internet. Some rather astonishing facts I learnt about praying mantids are as follows:

1. The word mantis derives from the Greek word which means prophet or fortune teller and they were in fact named for their typical prayer-like stance.

2. They are able to turn their heads 180 degrees for excellent vision and hearing.

3. Their antennae are used for smell.

4. Being a carnivorous insect, the mantis feeds primarily on other insects. However, it is not uncommon for larger mantids to consume small reptiles and even small mammals or birds!


5. To capture their prey, mantids use their camouflage to blend in with their surroundings and wait for their prey to be within striking distance. They then use their raptorial front legs to quickly snatch the victim and devour it alive!

6. Praying mantids will also prey on each other, usually during the nymph stage and during mating!

7. When threatened, praying mantids stand tall and spread their forelegs with their wings fanning out wide and mouths open. The fanning of the wings is used to make the mantis seem larger and to scare the opponent, with some species having bright colors and patterns on their hind wings and inner surfaces of their front legs for this purpose. If the harassment persists, the mantis will then strike with their forelegs and attempt to pinch or bite.

8. Since praying mantids feed during the day, they do a considerable amount of flying by night. The night, however, is when bats feed, using ultrasonic sound waves to pinpoint their prey. The frequency of these sound waves indicates the location and distance of the bat's prey. According to Yager and May, praying mantids are able to hear these ultrasonic sounds and when the frequency begins to increase rapidly, indicating an approaching bat, mantids will stop flying horizontally and begin a direct, high speed nose dive towards the safety of the ground. Often this descent will be preceded by an aerial loop or spin. Other times, the entire descent will consist of a downward spiral.

No wonder Wong Long of Shaolin was inspired to create the Praying Mantis Kungfu! While studying his books on Buddhism in a meadow near the temple, he witnessed two insects engaged in a deadly duel - a praying mantis attacking a cicada. Within moments the praying mantis had killed the cicada. Holding it in its strong front legs, it began to devour the cicada.


Wong was intrigued by the fierce attributes of the praying mantis. He was impressed by the way it had moved in and out and used its front legs to trap and draw in its prey. He saw in the fierce insect's predatory ability, a way to improve his own combat adeptness. Wong used a small stick and played with the praying mantis, observing how it used its skill as a predator to escape harm. It was these very observations that initiated the founding of this powerful martial arts form.


Soon, the Praying Mantis Kungfu was taught as a higher level of kungfu to all the monks of the Shaolin Temple, and it went on to aid the Shaolin monks in their quest in opposing the Manchurian takeover of China.

Blue-Eyed White

A client once brought in a white coated cat with blue eyes, complaining that she couldn't get her new pet to come to her when she called, even after frequently making various noises in attempts to attract its attention. Staring perceptively at the textbook blue-eyed white combination on the playful, lively creature on the examination table, I asked her a few more questions, and managed to establish that her cat didn't come to the door to meet her when she came home like most cats do, but continued to sleep on contentedly.

Because I had no means to perform the Brainstem Auditory Evoked Response (BAER) hearing test, I resorted to conducting my own, self-designed "vacuum cleaner" test. I cautioned the surprised owner as I plugged in a vacuum cleaner and switched it on to 'low', all ready in case the cat should fly off in fright at the sudden noise the machine created...but instead, as I anticipated, it looked curiously at the hoover and started to play with the intake nozzle!

Yes, blue-eyed cats with white fur are commonly deaf! Dominant white, denoted by the gene symbol 'W', is the colour associated with deafness in cats. Dominant white masks all other colours and cats may have blue, orange or odd eyes. Those with blue eyes have a high chance of deafness. Odd-eyed cats with only one blue eye have a high chance of unilateral deafness on the blue-eyed side. Those with orange eyes are far less likely to be deaf. Some dominant white kittens are born with smudges of coloured fur on top of their heads where the colour is incompletely masked by the gene. This smudge of colour usually disappears by adulthood, but kittens with colour smudges are more likely to have normal hearing.

The tapetum lucidum, which literally means 'bright carpet' in Latin, is a layer between the retina and choroid of the cat's eye that reflects light back to the retina, causing the eyes to glow at night when struck by light. It is made up of several layers of flattened cells covered by a zone of doubly refractive crystals. It serves to increase the quantity of light caught by the retina, granting excellent night vision to nocturnal animals such as cats. The tapetum is generated from the same stem cells as melanocytes. The blue eyes in a piebald or epistatic white cat indicates a lack of tapetum. Deafness is caused by the absence of a cell layer in the inner ear that originates from the same stem cells as the tapetum.

However, it is important to note that not all blue-eyed whites are deaf, as there are several different genes causing the same physical attributes, so it all depends on the cat's genotype and not its phenotype. Blue-eyedness and whiteness can both be caused by different genes. In odd-eyed white cats, the ear on the blue-eyed side may be deaf, but the one on the orange-eyed side usually has normal hearing.

In some animals, the blue-eyed white trait is sex-linked, which means it is carried on the X chromosome. It is also found in males more often than in females. However, in cats, the gene for white is carried on an autosome, which is a chromosome other than the X or Y sex chromosomes. The trait occurs equally in both male and female cats. Blue-eyed white is not sex-linked in cats.

"What should I do?!" asked the anxious owner, now obviously upset. "Nothing!" I replied, "A cat deals with its deafness very well and compensates for the lack of hearing with its other senses. So well, in fact, that it is almost impossible to distinguish a deaf cat from cats with normal hearing. Naturally you can't command your deaf cat by yelling, but do even hearing cats obey all the time?"

I however advised her not to breed her cat, as this trait could potentially be passed down to her kittens. Deafness can cause problems when a mother cat cannot hear her kittens crying and may neglect them. Deaf kittens cannot hear their mother calling to them and may get lost. Deafness may also affect free-roaming cats because they cannot hear danger approaching. Apart from these disadvantages, I see nothing much that is glaringly lacking in a deaf cat.



Deaf cats are more people-loving cats than those who can hear. However, these cats may have louder voices, presumably because they can't hear how loudly they meow!