yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

Yosemite's Strangest Love Story | America's National Parks | National Geographic


2m read
·Nov 10, 2024

NARRATOR: From Yosemite's iconic green valley to its secret eastern edge. The little rain reaches this arid landscape, blocked by over 13,000 feet of solid Sierra Nevada. An alien desert-like habitat, home to one of the park's strangest females: a praying mantis.

It's the last days of summer in Yosemite, and she's coming to the end of her seasonal feeding spree. Her main weapons are prominent front legs lined with shark tooth-shaped spikes. The praying mantis is the only insect on the planet with three-dimensional vision. Her lightning fast strike clocks at 1/20 of a second. But this is only a cricket drumstick appetizer.

She releases a concoction of alluring pheromones into the air. Oh do mantis. One lucky guy picks up the signal. Maybe some eye contact can smooth out this first date, or maybe not. In exchange for his would-be wooing, the Casanova is attacked. It's impossible for him to free himself. The male's head is ripped off—the female's final main course.

It's an abrupt end to a first date. Or is it? The decapitated male is still moving. The headless torso of the male praying mantis is still controlled by nerves in the abdomen. In a final mating act, his body completes what his head started. The female, on the other hand, is busy finishing dinner.

She'll mate with multiple males each breeding season. Not all of them will suffer the same fate. But the males who are decapitated may father the most eggs. The ultimate sacrifice in a unique Yosemite love story.

[BIRDS CHIRPING]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

More Articles

View All
Jessica Livingston on Cofounder Disputes and Making Something People Want
All right, so now we’re going to move on to another monster: co-founder disputes. I think people underestimate how critical founder relationships are to the success of a startup. Unfortunately, I’ve seen more founder breakups than I care to even count, an…
Jacobian prerequisite knowledge
Hello everyone. So, in these next few videos, I’m going to be talking about something called the Jacobian and more specifically, it’s the Jacobian matrix or sometimes the associated determinant. Here, I just want to talk about some of the background know…
Jocko Willink and Mike Sarraille - Helping Veterans Transition into the Private Sector
Um, alright guys, well thanks for hosting me to a podcast at the Jocko podcast studio. For those of our listeners that don’t know about you guys, I think we should start with some quick intros and then start talking about the new program you’re working on…
Expectation vs Reality: How to be a YouTuber For Beginners (2019)
What’s up you guys? It’s Graham here, so let’s talk for a minute, figuratively speaking, of course, because we actually have to make this video over 10 minutes long to be able to place mid-roll ads in the video about what it’s like to be a YouTuber. Is it…
Proportional reasoning with motion | AP Physics 1 | Khan Academy
NASA is researching how to send humans to Mars by as early as 2030. Now this is a complex mission because you’re traveling for millions of kilometers, and this will involve a lot of things. We have to think about how much fuel we need, how much oxygen we …
The Making of Jane - Trailer | National Geographic
JANE GOODALL: My mission was to get close to the chimpanzees and live among them, to be accepted. When I was 10 and I said, “I’m going to grow up, go to Africa, and live with wild animals and write books about them,” everybody laughed. I wanted to do thin…