Praying Mantis

It was a nice day to go for a walk yesterday so  hubby, our son, and I went  around our neighborhood.  As we walked  down the parking lot  at the back of Madonna HIgh school,  my husband saw this praying mantis.  We feared that  cars will  run him over, we picked him up and I carry him in my palm.  

I put him in our garden and he seems to like it.  I am not sure if it's a he or she but  it might be a  female.  Anyway, the kids named him Frank.

I am fascinated by praying mantises.  They seem very social.  They are great to have in the garden because they prey on other bugs.  

I remember the big one that we used to have in our garden, we named him George back then.

Reading about  praying mantise on Wikipedia, I learned that the mantises or Mantodea are an order of insects that contains over 2,400 species and about 430 genera in 15 families.  It is  by far the largest family being the Mantidae. Mantises are distributed worldwide in temperate and tropical habitats.

I looked in the garden again today where I left him and he wasn't there anymore.  I found him in another  plant so he must have flown but he  seems to like it there.

Wikipedia also states that mantises  are mostly ambush predators, but a few ground-dwelling species actively pursue their prey. They normally live for about a year.  In cooler climates, the adults lay eggs in autumn, and die. The eggs overwinter, protected by their hard capsule, and hatch in the spring. Females sometimes practice sexual cannibalism, eating their mates after copulation, or occasionally decapitating the males just before or during mating.