Bug lovers will recall that the female praying mantis cannibalizes the head of her sexual partner upon mating. Turns out this may not entirely accurate. Wrote Leland Ossian Howard in Science (1886): ...

Sexual cannibalism, Close-up portrait of large, vivid green female praying mantis eats the male after mating on tree branch covered with lichen. Transcaucasian tree mantis (Hierodula transcaucasica)© ...

For a small number of animals, reproduction marks a biological endpoint rather than a stage in an ongoing life cycle. Death follows mating with such consistency that it can be predicted within a ...

As you probably know, the female praying mantis will sometimes bite her mate’s head off. It’s not something that the insects make a habit of, exactly – they probably only do it when a male is ...