Animal
Orchid mantis
The orchid mantis looks like a pretty white and pink flower. Insects fly over to visit the flower, and the mantis catches them for lunch!
The orchid mantis is a praying mantis from the rainforests of Southeast Asia that looks like a flower. Its white and pink colors fool bees and other insects that visit flowers, and the mantis catches them. Its leg flaps look like petals, and scientists recently found that they also help young mantises glide through the air.
Hymenopus coronatus (Hymenopodidae) is a flower-mimicking mantis whose coloration is indistinguishable from real flowers to bee vision; in field tests it attracted pollinators more often than flowers did, a predatory strategy unknown in any other animal. Its first-instar nymphs mimic a red-and-black assassin bug, its petal-like femoral lobes work as airfoils for gliding, and females are two to three times as long as males.
Photo: I, Luc Viatour, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Meet the orchid mantis
The orchid mantis is an insect that looks like a flower.
It is white and pink. Its legs have flat parts shaped like petals. It sits very still and waits.
The orchid mantis is a kind of praying mantis, an insect that catches other insects with its spiky front legs. What makes it special is its disguise: it is white and pink, and its legs have wide, flat flaps that look like flower petals.
People have called it a flower copycat for about 200 years. But only recently have scientists tested how its disguise works, and they found a few surprises. Female orchid mantises are much bigger than males: a grown-up female is about 6 centimeters long, two or three times as long as a male.
Hymenopus coronatus is a mantis of the family Hymenopodidae, the flower mantises. Its white and pink coloration, petal-shaped femoral lobes and broad abdomen have made it the textbook example of flower mimicry for about 200 years (Zhao and colleagues 2024), but O'Hanlon and colleagues (2014) noted that the idea was not tested experimentally until their study.
Sexual size dimorphism is extreme. Wang and colleagues (2023), who assembled the species' genome, report adult females 60 to 65 millimeters long and males 25 to 30 millimeters, with females going through two or three more molts; they linked the difference to ecdysone, the insect molting hormone. Mantids as a group number about 2,500 species.
Quick facts
- Group
- Invertebrate
- Length
- 25 to 65 mm
Where it lives
Orchid mantises live in warm, wet rainforests in Asia.
They sit on plants and flowers. They are so well hidden that people rarely spot them.
Orchid mantises live in the rainforests of Southeast Asia and nearby lands. Scientists have reported them from Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, India and southern China.
They are very hard to find in the wild, because they blend in so well with the plants around them. That is one reason scientists still know little about their lives in nature.
Wang and colleagues (2023) summarize its reported distribution as rainforest in Malaysia, Indonesia, India, Thailand, Vietnam and southern China; their own animals came from an ootheca collected in the Xishuangbanna rainforest of Yunnan, China.
Because of its camouflage it is rarely observed in the wild, which has limited knowledge of its biology. GBIF also holds records from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos; they are not shaded here because the sources used do not name them.
Continent
Its habitat
Where can you find this animal?
- Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
- Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Lives here naturally · Countries and seas named by a scientific source
Rainforests of Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, India and southern China (Yunnan). It lives only in suitable forest within each country shown; records from Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos are not shaded.
Places: Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam, India and China.
Source: https://www.ebi.ac.uk/europepmc/webservices/rest/PMC10415354/fullTextXML · checked October 2026
Sightings recorded · Records of wild sightings (GBIF)
Counts of GBIF records of wild observations (human and machine) and preserved specimens. Records include introduced populations, vagrants, escaped or released animals and misidentifications, so a country with records is not necessarily part of the native range.
Wild sightings have been recorded in Thailand, Malaysia, China, Indonesia, Myanmar, Cambodia, India, Laos and 1 more places.
Source: gbif · checked October 2026
Range maps show where scientists say an animal lives, often country by country. An animal may live in only part of a country shown, and sightings records can include animals that wandered far from home.
A flower that hunts
The orchid mantis eats insects.
Bees and other bugs fly to it, because they think it is a flower. Then the mantis grabs them with its front legs.
Orchid mantises are hunters. Instead of chasing their food, they let it come to them. Bees and other insects that visit flowers see the mantis and fly over, and the mantis grabs them.
In field experiments, scientists found that, to a bee's eyes, the mantis's color looks just like the colors of real flowers nearby. Orchid mantises sitting alone attracted pollinating insects even more often than real flowers did, and they caught some of them.
O'Hanlon, Holwell and Herberstein (2014) showed that the mantis's color is indistinguishable from sympatric flowers for hymenopteran pollinators, and that isolated mantises attracted wild pollinators at a higher rate than flowers and captured them. It was the first experimental evidence of pollinator deception in the orchid mantis, a predatory strategy not documented in any other animal.
Mizuno and colleagues (2014) added a chemical trick. Juvenile females often caught oriental honeybees (Apis cerana), and their mandibles carried two compounds that oriental honeybees use in their own pheromone communication; the juveniles released one of them while hunting, and dummies scented with the mixture attracted the bees. In captivity, young mantises are fed fruit flies and older ones crickets.
Did you know?
Baby orchid mantises can glide like tiny paper planes.
Young orchid mantises use their petal-shaped leg flaps like little wings to glide when they jump.
Nymphs show the shallowest gliding trajectories recorded in terrestrial invertebrates, using their femoral lobes as cambered airfoils (Zhao and colleagues 2024).
Petals for gliding
The orchid mantis has big eyes and two spiky front legs for grabbing.
Its other legs have flaps like petals. Young mantises can use these flaps to glide through the air!
Like all praying mantises, the orchid mantis has a triangle-shaped head with big eyes and long antennae, and two front legs lined with sharp spines for holding prey.
For a long time people thought its petal-shaped leg flaps were just part of its flower disguise. But in 2024 scientists showed that young orchid mantises are excellent gliders. When they jump to escape, the leg flaps act like little wings, making the mantis about a third bigger from above and helping it float down gently.
The raptorial forelegs carry rows of spines; the mid and hind femora bear the expanded, petal-shaped lobes. Wang and colleagues (2023) showed that the lobes are mostly cuticle, with their growth controlled by Wnt signaling and prolonged Ultrabithorax expression.
Zhao and colleagues (2024) found that the lobes are cambered airfoils that increase the projected area by about 36 percent. Nymphs are excellent gliders with the shallowest gliding paths recorded in terrestrial invertebrates, and older female nymphs keep gliding despite a 165-fold rise in body mass, thanks to a 40 to 56 percent reduction in wing loading as the lobes grow. They describe these as the first gliding-adapted "leg wings" known in a wingless arthropod, and argue the lobes probably do not help lure pollinators.
From red baby to white flower
Orchid mantis babies hatch from an egg case.
At first, the babies are red and black. After they shed their skin, they turn white and pink, like a flower. They shed their skin again and again as they grow.
A mother orchid mantis lays her eggs in a case called an ootheca. Mantises have no pupa stage: the young, called nymphs, look like small adults and grow by shedding their skin.
The first change is the most amazing. Newly hatched nymphs are red and black, and they look like a bad-tasting assassin bug that predators avoid. After their first molt, they turn white and pink and start to look like flowers. Females molt two or three more times than males, which is one reason they grow so much bigger.
Eggs are laid in an ootheca, and development is hemimetabolous. First-instar nymphs are red and black, mimicking a noxious assassin bug (Reduviidae); from the second instar they switch to the white and pink floral pattern (Wang and colleagues 2023).
Pei and colleagues (2025) traced the switch to the first molt, when red pigment (decarboxylated xanthommatin) is exported and white uric acid accumulates in the epidermis, driven by a pigment transporter they named Redboy and regulated by ecdysone. Predation experiments showed the change improves predator avoidance in the first instar and both prey attraction and predator avoidance later. Females undergo two or three more molts than males.
Sit, wait and fool
The orchid mantis sits very, very still.
It waits for insects to come close. If something scary comes, a young mantis can jump and glide away.
Orchid mantises are sit-and-wait hunters. They stay very still on a plant, looking like part of a flower, and wait for insects to come to them.
Young orchid mantises have a second trick: a smell. Scientists in Japan found that young females can give off a scent like the one honeybees use to talk to each other, which draws bees in close. And when danger comes, a young mantis can jump and glide away on its petal-shaped legs.
H. coronatus is a sit-and-wait predator that combines visual mimicry with chemical signals. Mizuno and colleagues (2014) found that most honeybees approached juvenile mantises from the front, which led the researchers to look for, and find, a chemical lure; juveniles succeeded in catching oriental honeybees more often than adult females did.
Zhao and colleagues (2024) observed that orchid mantises escape by actively jumping and then gliding. Wang and colleagues (2023) interpret the white-and-pink pattern as serving both predatory camouflage and protection from predators.
Did you know?
Orchid mantises can attract more bees than real flowers do.
In field experiments, orchid mantises attracted pollinating insects even more often than real flowers did.
Isolated mantises attracted wild pollinators at a higher rate than flowers, the first experimental evidence of pollinator deception in the orchid mantis (O'Hanlon and colleagues 2014).
A hidden life
Orchid mantises are hard to find in the forest.
Scientists are still learning about them. Keeping rainforests healthy keeps their home safe.
The orchid mantis has not been given an IUCN conservation status, and nobody knows how many live in the wild. Because they hide so well, scientists rarely see them in nature.
Orchid mantises are popular insects, and scientists often study ones raised in captivity. They live in rainforests, so protecting those forests protects the places where wild orchid mantises live.
Hymenopus coronatus has no IUCN Red List assessment (Not Evaluated), and its wild populations have not been studied. Its camouflage means it is rarely observed in the wild, and O'Hanlon and colleagues (2014) describe it as a popular, charismatic insect whose best-known behavior went untested for more than a century.
Much current research uses captive-bred animals; Wang and colleagues (2023) reared theirs from a wild ootheca from Yunnan. All the sources describe it as a rainforest insect.
Did you know?
A baby orchid mantis is red and black, not pink.
Newly hatched orchid mantises are red and black, copying a bad-tasting assassin bug, and turn white and pink after their first molt.
First-instar nymphs mimic a noxious assassin bug before a programmed color switch at the first molt (Wang and colleagues 2023; Pei and colleagues 2025).
Amazing facts
-
Orchid mantises can attract more bees than real flowers do.
In field experiments, orchid mantises attracted pollinating insects even more often than real flowers did.
Isolated mantises attracted wild pollinators at a higher rate than flowers, the first experimental evidence of pollinator deception in the orchid mantis (O'Hanlon and colleagues 2014).
-
Baby orchid mantises can glide like tiny paper planes.
Young orchid mantises use their petal-shaped leg flaps like little wings to glide when they jump.
Nymphs show the shallowest gliding trajectories recorded in terrestrial invertebrates, using their femoral lobes as cambered airfoils (Zhao and colleagues 2024).
-
A baby orchid mantis is red and black, not pink.
Newly hatched orchid mantises are red and black, copying a bad-tasting assassin bug, and turn white and pink after their first molt.
First-instar nymphs mimic a noxious assassin bug before a programmed color switch at the first molt (Wang and colleagues 2023; Pei and colleagues 2025).
-
Young orchid mantises can smell like a bee's message.
Young orchid mantises can give off a smell that honeybees use to talk to each other, which draws the bees close.
Juvenile mantises release 3-hydroxyoctanoic acid, a compound in oriental honeybee pheromone communication, while hunting (Mizuno and colleagues 2014).
Words to know
- mimicry
- when a living thing looks, smells or acts like something else
- camouflage
- colors or shapes that help an animal blend in
- pollinator
- an animal, such as a bee, that carries pollen from flower to flower
- ootheca
- the egg case a mother mantis makes
- nymph
- a young insect that looks a bit like the adult and grows by molting
- glide
- to float through the air without flapping
Discovery challenge
-
What does the orchid mantis look like?
What does the orchid mantis's disguise copy?
What does Hymenopus coronatus mimic to attract prey?
- A flower
- A rock
- A snake
Show the answer
A flower
It looks like a white and pink flower.
It looks like a flower, so insects that visit flowers come close.
A flower: its color is indistinguishable from real flowers to hymenopteran pollinators.
-
What color is a baby orchid mantis?
What color are newly hatched orchid mantis nymphs?
What coloration do first-instar nymphs show?
- Red and black
- Green and yellow
- Blue and white
Show the answer
Red and black
Babies are red and black. Later they turn white and pink.
They are red and black, like a bad-tasting assassin bug, until their first molt.
Aposematic red and black, mimicking a reduviid, before the switch to white and pink at the first molt.
-
What can young orchid mantises do with their petal legs?
What did scientists discover the petal-shaped leg flaps help young mantises do?
What function did Zhao and colleagues (2024) demonstrate for the femoral lobes?
- Swim
- Glide
- Dig
Show the answer
Glide
They can glide through the air!
The flaps act like little wings, helping young mantises glide when they jump.
Gliding: the lobes are cambered airfoils that increase projected area and lower wing loading.
-
Which orchid mantis is bigger?
Which is bigger, an adult female or an adult male orchid mantis?
How do adult female and male orchid mantises compare in length?
- The female
- The male
- They are the same
Show the answer
The female
The mom mantis is much bigger than the dad.
Females are about 6 centimeters long, two to three times as long as males.
Females 60 to 65 millimeters versus males 25 to 30, after two or three extra molts.
Places where you might see it
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Watch
Country
Malaysia
Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia, just north of the Equator. One part is on the Malay Peninsula and the other is on the island of Borneo. It has rainforests, huge caves, Mount Kinabalu and the city of Kuala Lumpur, with about 34.4 million people (2026).
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Watch
Country
Thailand
Thailand is a tropical country in the middle of mainland Southeast Asia, with forested mountains in the north, rice fields on its central plains and a long, narrow peninsula in the south. Its capital is Bangkok, and about 65.8 million people were on its civil register at the end of 2025.
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Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia, just north of the Equator. One part is on the Malay Peninsula and the other is on the island of Borneo. It has rainforests, huge caves, Mount Kinabalu and the city of Kuala Lumpur, with about 34.4 million people (2026).
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Army ants hunt together in giant swarms and never build a permanent nest. This page is about the best-studied kind, Eciton burchellii, of Central and South American forests. Each night of its traveling phase the colony moves, and the workers link their legs to build a living camp around their queen and young.
For parents & teachers
What children will learn
- Explain how mimicry can help an animal catch food and avoid being eaten.
- Describe the orchid mantis's life cycle and its color change after the first molt.
- Describe how scientists tested an old idea with experiments.
- Explain how one body part (the leg lobes) can have more than one use.
Recommended ages: 3 to 17 · About 15 minutes
Talk about it
- Why might a hunter that looks like a flower catch more food than one that chases its prey?
- People believed the flower idea for about 200 years before testing it. Why is testing important?
- Why might a baby mantis look like a bad-tasting bug instead of a flower?
Try at home or in class
- Drop two paper squares of the same weight, one flat and one crumpled: which floats down more slowly, like a gliding mantis?
- Draw a mantis disguised as a flower in your garden, then ask someone to find it.
Key vocabulary: mimicry, camouflage, pollinator, ootheca, nymph, glide
Where these facts come from
- GBIF Backbone Taxonomy and GBIF Occurrence Search , Global Biodiversity Information Facility (CC0 1.0 (backbone); occurrence counts are facts derived from records under CC0, CC BY and CC BY-NC)
- Wikidata , Wikimedia Foundation (CC0 1.0)
- Pollinator deception in the orchid mantis (O'Hanlon, Holwell and Herberstein, 2014) , The American Naturalist (PubMed abstract)
- Petal-shaped femoral lobes facilitate gliding in orchid mantises (Zhao and colleagues, 2024) , Current Biology (PubMed abstract)
- Evolutionary genomics of camouflage innovation in the orchid mantis (Wang and colleagues, 2023) , Nature Communications (full text via Europe PMC)
- The pigment transporter Redboy confers programmed body colour transition in orchid mantises (Pei and colleagues, 2025) , Nature Ecology & Evolution (PubMed abstract)
- "Double-trick" visual and chemical mimicry by the juvenile orchid mantis used in predation of the oriental honeybee (Mizuno and colleagues, 2014) , Zoological Science (PubMed abstract)
- Wikimedia Commons , Wikimedia Foundation (Per file: Public domain, CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA only (credited on each page))
Checked, not yet human-reviewed. Last updated October 27, 2026. Spotted a mistake? Tell us.