> Is it praying mantis or preying mantis? I figure it's preying mantis, since they prey on other bugs. Unless its name refers to how its front limbs are held, or something.

Both are correct, and the rationale behind each spelling is exactly as you say. I spell it "praying," which seems to be slightly more common, but both are accepted.

We don't have those here, but we found praying mantises all the time in the hedges around our house in Virginia. Those are without a doubt the coolest bugs there are. Certainly among a very few (fireflies, butterflies, and -- since they eat mosquitoes -- dragonflies) that I even like at all.

I lived in Virginia when I took high school biology, and one of the things we had to do was the requisite insect collection. We had to assemble a collection of insects representing some minimum number of orders. Anyway, we got extra credit for a praying mantis; since those are endangered, we couldn't kill them, but we could bring one in in a jar, and the teacher would let it go the next day or so.

Well this bit of extra credit was easy for me, because I already knew where to find them in our yard. So I went out and caught one in a jar filled with grass and twigs. On a Friday afternoon, after school. It would be three days before I could bring it in for credit, so I kept it in my room. I didn't know if we'd live that long in a jar, so I caught him some food. First thing I caught for him was a moth. It was a pretty teensy moth. But I stuck it in the jar and watched, waiting to see if he'd catch the thing.

For those that aren't aware, praying mantises are very laid-back. The young ones are green (this one was a young one), and they turn pepperly brown with age, so no matter what age they are, they still blend into hedges and bushes very well. They just sort of sit still until a bug comes near, and then they move lightning-fast with their front legs to catch it.

Well anyway, he wasn't catching this moth, that was just flying obliviously and stupidly around him. But I came back later, and there were two disconnected wings lying in there and nothing else. So I put a cricket in there. Again, he wasn't catching the thing. But I checked up on him later, and he was a very happy feasting praying mantis. Head in one foreleg, body in the other. I'll spare further details, but it surprisingly was not gross -- it was fascinating. Later my biology teacher told me that they don't usually feed in captivity, so he was intrigued that he ate the moth and cricket.

So there are a number of reasons I like praying mantises when I'd just as soon not have anything to do with other bugs. One, they're big without being ugly, so they're not nasty little things that fly up noses and into ears, nor are they Vile Incarnate (like, say, cockroaches, which are maybe a third of the size of a praying mantis). Two, they don't move much, get underfoot, crawl into shoes, bathtubs, or otherwise invade human living space. Three, they don't harm people. Four, they're not overpopulated. Five, they are 733T COOL KILLER ASSASSINS.