The Milkweed Gang -- Beware of the Orange & Black

An adventure story of the orange-and-black.

The following is a true tale of an event that happened in Bloomington, Illinois on the afternoon of September 23, 2006. Those of you who are offended by anthropomorphism are advised to go no further.

“Hello!” “Let me introduce myself. I am Tenodera aridifolia sinensis and I am a vicious carnivore.”

“I am a very large female praying mantid and, as you can see, I have arms of steel.”

“Pardon me; I think I see a snack coming.”

“Hi folks. It’s me Labidomera clivicollis; your friendly swamp milkweed leaf beetle. As you can tell from my title, I eat milkweed plants and that means I’m special. You see, we critters that eat milkweed, like my good friends the monarch butterfly and the milkweed bug, all taste yucky cause we taste like the latex sap of the milkweed we eat. We’ve even formed sort of a milkweed gang and our colors are orange and black. Nobody better mess with the orange-and-black cause we’re bad!”

“Today, I am going to do a little experiment that you shouldn’t do at home. I’m going to walk right up this papyrus leaflet towards what might seem like certain death; towards a vicious carnivore dozens of times my size.”

“Yes, it is I, Tenodera the magnificent. Come to your death stupid beetle.”

“Well, here we go. Our naive carnivore will soon learn; you don’t mess with the orange-and-black!”

News Flash: Mantid grabs beetle. "Gocha!"

News Flash: Mantid spits out Beetle. "Ptuey!"

"Yuckety-Yuck-Yuck!"

That’s one mantid that will never mess with the orange-and-black again!

"I'm outta here!"

"Bye now."

So ends another adventure of "The Orange-and-Black".

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Notes about the story to the left.

anthrop-, anthropo- is a prefix that means "man, as in mankind" or "human".

morph is a word root that means "shape or form".

anthropomorphism is defined as "the giving of human characteristics to non-human things" and, although it is often praised in cartoons and literature, it is condemned in biology. To be objective, a biologist must not assume that other animal experience the world, think or behave as humans do (even if it superficially appears that they do).

A carnivore is "any animal that eats other animals for food", a herbivore is "any animal that eats plants for food" and an omnivore is "any animal that feeds on both plant and animal material".

The Greek word "mantis" means "fortune teller" and is a correct common name for any member of all the nine families of this type of insect that are currently recognized. Most praying mantises however are found in the Family Mantidae and it is acceptable to call members of this family of insects "mantids". They are called "praying" mantises because of the way they hold their front legs as if in prayer.

Naive simply means "not experienced." The Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary defines this word as:

1. marked by unaffected simplicity. 2. a. deficient in worldly wisdom or informed judgement. b. not previously subjected to experimentation or a particular experimental situation.

This is a real photo that I took immediately after the mantid spit out the beetle. After she caught the beetle, she started to nibble on it and then dropped it and it landed back on the leaf.

Then the beetle started to walk away again.

It moved to the top of the plant.

Then it moved on along this leaf.

And then it flew away.

I re-presented the beetle to the mantid again but this second time the mantid just backed away. It had learned its lesson.