European Mantis

The European mantis, Mantis religiosa, is the type species of the mantis order and among the most widespread mantis species globally, native to a broad swath of Europe, Africa, and Asia. It was accidentally introduced to North America around 1899 near Rochester, New York, likely arriving on imported nursery stock, and has since spread across much of the northeastern and midwestern United States and adjacent Canada.

Adults are typically a bright, uniform green, though brown color forms also occur, with a slender body and a characteristic triangular head that can swivel to follow movement. One of the most reliable identifying features is a small dark spot, often described as a bullseye or target mark, located on the inner surface of each front coxa, visible when the raptorial forelegs are extended.

As a widespread ambush predator, the European mantis feeds on a variety of insects it encounters in grassy and shrubby habitats, and its introduction to North America has made it one of the most commonly observed mantis species across a large part of the continent alongside the Chinese mantis.

• Slender body, 50–75 mm, typically bright green, occasionally brown
• Small dark bullseye or target spot visible on the inner base of each front leg
• Triangular head with prominent eyes capable of tracking movement
• Long, spined forelegs folded in the classic 'praying' posture
• Lookalikes: Chinese mantis is larger and lacks the bullseye leg mark; Carolina mantis is smaller and mottled brown-gray

Native across much of Europe, Africa, and Asia, the European mantis has become established in the northeastern and midwestern United States and parts of southern Canada since its introduction around 1899. It favors open, sunny habitats with abundant grasses and shrubs, including meadows, roadside verges, gardens, and old fields.

The European mantis is a patient ambush hunter, relying on stillness and green camouflage before striking rapidly with its spined forelegs to seize passing insects. Its diet includes flies, moths, grasshoppers, and other insects encountered while perched motionless on vegetation. As with other mantises, it plays a natural role in regulating local insect populations, while itself being vulnerable to predation by birds and other larger animals, particularly during the earlier, wingless nymphal stages.

Females produce a frothy, papery egg case, or ootheca, attached to plant stems or other supports in late summer or autumn, which hardens and protects the eggs through the winter months. Nymphs hatch in spring as small, wingless versions of the adult form and undergo a series of molts through summer, gaining functional wings only at the final molt into adulthood. Adults mate and lay eggs before dying with the arrival of cold weather, completing a single generation each year.