11 October 2026
The Orchid Mantis: the flower that hunts
Most camouflaged animals hide from what would eat them. The Orchid Mantis, Hymenopus coronatus, of Southeast Asia, does the opposite: it looks like a flower so that its prey comes to it.
It was the first animal shown by experiment to lure pollinators by imitating a flower, and it attracts more of them than the real flowers do.
The young often begin red and black. As they grow they can shift between white and pink over several days, to match where they live. In the book it is plate 94, The Floral Deception.