Question 2-

The Pre/aying Mantis :

A lot of us might remember watching shows like ‘The World’s Most Bizarre’ or ‘The Most
Extreme animals’ on infotainment channels. It was like witnessing a theatre play or a
chiaroscuro painting by Rembrandt moulded into a wildlife show. It’s a leisure activity
through which we also derive pleasure. Often people call it ‘watching something where you
don’t have to think too much’, ‘not cerebral’ etc. In doing this many of us swallow
stereotypes aimlessly. Thinking critically is disregarded and reduced to being ‘easily
offended’.

For example, female praying mantis, eat the males for nutrition, right after mating. This is a
well-documented phenomenon that is frequently showcased in popular media. For reference,
I have used a popular documentary telecasted on Nat Geo Wild. A few things stand out at
first, the overpowering male voice and unmistaken de-normalization of very natural
behaviour for the species because of humanistic bias/anthropomorphization.

Due to the nature of the narrative, or rather how it is perceived, the actions of the female
mantis are expressed in a strong active voice while the male is personified with a
significantly weaker passive narrative. These images portray the mantis female in a vamp-
like role at the “cost of appearing disturbingly aggressive” (Martin, 1991) subliminally
indicating a negative image of the woman/female for whom the man/male is a victim. The
video starts with the words “a little too voracious if you ask the male” as the narrator
continues to talk about how the autumn makes him frisky as it is ‘mating’ season just before
the winter arrives. Sentences like “a well-fed female is a well-mannered one”, “the female
waits patiently” are used, playing with the viewer’s mind. Fast cuts, jolty transitions and
tacky music all of which resemble Indian soaps added to manipulate the viewer’s mind in a
one track direction, sympathizing with the male. It even ends with a shot of a headless male
dropping to the ground with the words, “when she Figure 1
has had enough and breaks things off and dumps
him.”

A very similar narrative follows in another video of a

female black widow spider devouring the male. Only
this time, the narrator is a woman. Upon checking the
comments sections of both these videos, most
comments congratulated and applauded the male
spider for his tremendous feat saying, “Don’t care,
still had sex” or comments that hint at a contractual
basis to this very natural phenomena including the name of the arachnid. She becomes a
‘Widow’ after she devours her mate and cannot be seen as single entity and lacks an
individualized relationship to sovereignty. (Taneja, 2018)
Figure 2

This kind of lauding is very visible in our human counterparts where a man with an active sex
life and multiple partners is synonymous with words like Casanova/Stud whereas women are
shamed for both-an active sexual life or choosing not to have kids.

The comments section was also filled with typical egotistical remarks from men. This was
specifically the case in this video, the only variable between it and the praying mantis video
being the female narrator.

Here, the anthropomorphization is only used as a tool to adhere to and justify the blatant
patriarchy of our time, with a narrative that is squared to befit a humanistic lens. The title of
the praying mantis video by NatGeoWild YouTube channel, ‘Deadly praying Mantis love’
just makes it murkier. It derails by saying it’s beyond our understanding but still uses a model
that reinstates our presence in them.

The PBS video, ‘Praying Mantis love is waaay weirder than you think’ on the Curiosity
Stream (Deep Look) YouTube channel, (this time with a female narrator) recognises the
instinctual act of passing on one’s genes for the survival of their own kind as a heroic act, a
cathartic end to the male; being “able to father more eggs if decapitated while copulating.” It
ends by calling him “the ultimate winner in the primal quest to pass on his genes.”

Irrational humanised notions of beauty and social acceptability which is linked to structural
violence like caste marriages, body shaming etc are applied even to non-human animals
where as they have a very different logic behind their behaviour, adaptations which in its
truest sense is governed by natural selection. These adaptations evolve specifically for
optimum survival and reproduction chances. The females in the non-humans are in charge of
sexual selection which in turn saves the species because they’re always thinking through
threats. Take for instance, the case of Sri Lankan Elephants. Initially females would select
the male with the largest and most symmetrical tusks for mating as tusks are a symbol of
health, so the best tuskers would have the strongest progeny. However, with the highly fatal
introduced threat of poaching for ivory, the tuskers were slowly getting wiped out. So
females now select males with no tusks so that the lineage survives. There are almost no
tuskers among Sri Lankan elephants today. (Miththapala)

The males just compete for a female to sow their seeds and ensure the continuity of their
gene pool. It is the female that warrants control over selecting the strongest among all, to
ensure a hardy lineage, progeny with best survival chances. However, as in humans even
here, the female role is taken for granted and overlooked while the male role, glorified.
The praying mantis acts in a certain way to help to lay more eggs which needs a tremendous
amount of energy that she gets by eating not only other insects but any insect that might help
her get the energy which includes her own kind. Humanistic ideas of cannibalism would not
apply here.

The social implications of such narratives have effects beyond repair but that is not the only
thing with detrimental effects. Growing up, these kinds of dramatization of animals,
humanising them to a point of no return with portrayal of anomalies synonymised with
monstrosity gravely impact the viewer's attitudes, consciously or subconsciously. We are
rendered sceptical to them, causing us to damage the natural world, projecting our
irrationalities directly on to them. These seemingly beastly phenomena which are spoken
about very loosely are in fact present in nature because they are adaptations that worked. The
outlook of a female devouring the male and associating that with characterizations of female
viciousness/ femme fatale is actually unscientific, irrational and a very anthropomorphic way
of looking at things, for while the human race has gone far and wide in understanding and
deciphering natural selection and how it works, the survival of the fittest and know the exact
reasoning of why something happens, we still would like to choose a narrative that
demonizes the occurrence of this very logical notion in nature.-"Our very language, held
implacably… in the grip of a bipolarity of gender" (Menon, 2012)

In some cases, these projections may be instinctual but it is seminal to understand that what
we called natural now is deeply cultural; say for instance the idea of blackness that has been
portrayed in animals. We’d rather own a white mouse (image of sterile, lab rodent, clean and
white) rather than owning a black mouse which is black and dirty. Same goes for fur/hair
where the biological and very logical aspects of the body have been demonised or
dehumanised through the western episteme. (Sanathanan)

Another example would be birds of paradise. These are a set of 39 species of birds each with
their own courtship ritual where the male pursues the female so that she can make choice. In
most narratives for the same, however, the male is portrayed as tirelessly dancing, performing
and putting on a show. Whatever the outcome, the viewer’s minds are directed towards
sympathizing for the male who is trying so hard to impress a female that is playing ‘hard to
get’. While in actuality, both sexes are genetically wired to continue their kind. Rejection is a
very human thing. This kind of narrative sounds far too familiar to the likes of popular
movies like Arjun Reddy. It readily becomes a part of our culture; men not being able to take
rejection, till a point that it creates a category that we’re all very familiar with—the
‘friendzone’.

Although it may be necessary to anthropomorphize to make sense of another world but where
do we draw the line. When does understanding end and projection start?

Bibliography:

Martin, E. (1991). The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based
on Stereotypical Male-. Chucago Journals, 18.
Menon, N. (2012). Seeing like a feminist. Zubaan Books.

Miththapala, S. (n.d.). The fall of the tusker, The future of the tusker in Sri Lanka.

Sanathanan, T. (n.d.). http://www.historyforpeace.pw/news/how-to-draw-histories-art-as-

method/.

Taneja, A. V. (2018). Jinnealogy.

Links to the referenced videos:

NatGeoWild YouTube channel, ‘Deadly praying Mantis love’ (Male Narrator) -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__RqOzOzWjY&t=48s

Deep Look YouTube channel, ‘Praying Mantis love is waaay weirder than you think’
(Female Narrator) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHf47gI8w04

Deep Look YouTube channel, ‘Why the Male Black Widow is a Real Home Wrecker’
(Female Narrator) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NpJNeGqExrc