My week as an orchid mantis

You need to be beautiful yourself if you are to understand beauty. Thomas Aquinas got it wrong. Beauty, he said, is “that which pleases in the apprehension of”. But true beauty has nothing to do with pleasure. Beauty is lethal or it’s not worth having.

Monday

My orchid, myself. You try and tell the difference. Every part of me is a petal, or seems so: every part of me is as gorgeous as the orchid I stand by. Together we make one glorious whole: no one, but no one can tell us apart. When the wind blows and the flowers sway in the hot wet winds of the jungle, I sway too. I’m a flower: come and adore me.

Tuesday

They say a clipper butterfly is beautiful. What use was his beauty today as he expired in my arms? Most insects walk on six legs. I walk on four: my four back petals are for moving. That leaves me with two front limbs or petals to do what I like with. And what I like doing is killing butterflies, like the son of Coriolanus. Unlike him I do it to stay alive. My front limbs curve back on themselves and are full of hidden teeth. I’m a lion with two mouths. A butterfly came to feast on the juice of orchids and found himself in my arms: his wings clipped.

Wednesday

I can change colour through a range of pinks and whites and even browns to look more like my chosen flower. I have a small black spot on my abdomen which looks like a fly feeding on flowery me. My resemblance to my chosen flower is no superficial thing: I reflect ultra-violet light just like my flowers. My beauty is so complete that more pollinators visit me than come to the actual flowers. Is that not a triumph?

Thursday

Savour the conception: my beauty is no passive thing, not just a way of hiding. It’s an active part of my strategy: I am the decoy as well as the killing weapon. And there’s a plus. There are plenty of birds in the jungle, always hungry for a nice big insect. But they can’t see me. They too think I’m a flower. My beauty makes me deadly; my beauty keeps me safe: one of the world’s great win-doubles.

Friday

Do males envy our beauty? Or do they just admire it? Bit of both, I expect. They’re half the size of us females at best, drab little things who can’t hope to operate as we do. They’re lurkers and sneakers and ambushers, and big stuff like clippers are beyond their scope. But they have their points and when the moment is right I’ll make my tryst. After all, the world needs more mantises.

Saturday

I have plans. I’ll guard the eggs, the least a mother can do. Once hatched, the nymphs can fend for themselves. The best of them will take up a life among the flowers: more beautiful than those whose beauty they imitate.

Orchid mantis CV

Lifespan: About 10 months

Eating habits: Butterflies are best

Hobbies: Treachery

Sexual preferences: Males are small but cute

Photograph by Alamy