Imagine being a bug or small bird who spots a beautiful orchid, only to learn upon closer inspection that it's covered in bugs who want to eat you.
That's what happened to this poor grasshopper who got too close to an orchid mantis:
Via Wikipedia:
The insect is pink and white, with flattened limbs with "that semi-opalescent, semi-crystalline appearance that is caused in flower-petals by a purely structural arrangement of liquid globules or empty cells". The mantis climbs up and down the twigs of the plant until it finds one that has flowers. It holds on to these with the claws of its two rearmost pairs of legs. It then sways from side to side, and soon various small flies land on and around it, attracted by the small black spot on the end of its abdomen which resembles a fly. When a larger Dipteran fly, as big as a house fly, landed nearby, the mantis at once seized and ate it.
• Alive Orchids and Leaves (YouTube / InsecthausTV)
