SCIENCE WORLD SCHEMES : ' BUG BITES BIRD '

 

Birds feast on bugs - not the other way around. But that role reversal is what Mahmood Kolnegari of the Avaye Dornaye Khakestari Institute, in Iran, and Connor Panter of the University of Nottingham, in Britain, saw when they put a camera near the nest of a purple sunbird, in Kerman province, Iran.

As they report in Ecology and Evolution, their camera captured a footage of a praying mantis killing a nestling and eating from it.

Praying mantises are known for their aggression, but even so, the attack was a surprise to the researchers.

They assumed it was a bizarre one, until, a  month later, they caught a second mantis killing and feeding on a nestling crested lark. 

Searching the literature to see if such predation had been noted before, they found a single, century-old report documenting a similar finding.

A more general internet research revealed a couple of non-scientific reports, from Taiwan and Brazil, of mantids eating nestlings.

The World Students Society thanks The Economist.