The scene that unfolded outside my door this morning was astonishing — like a miniature natural spectacle I had never imagined. At first, I thought it was dust or ants crawling across the brick wall under the porch. But when I looked closer, I realized — these weren’t just insects, but tiny praying mantises that had just hatched from their mysterious capsule.
From a small oval structure resembling a foamy cocoon — an ootheca — fragile, translucent creatures emerged one after another. Their bodies shimmered in the morning light, and their thin, almost weightless legs clung to the brick, the air, and even to one another. It was as if the wall itself was alive and breathing. Hundreds of tiny mantises slowly spread out in all directions, forming a miniature army of newborn hunters.
This phenomenon is called “synchronous emergence” — a remarkable trait of praying mantises, where all the babies come into the world almost at the same moment. I stood there mesmerized: how can nature be so precise, organized, and yet completely wild? The explanation is both simple and ingenious. These little ones are the offspring of a female mantis who laid her eggs last autumn, when the air was still warm and the grass still green.
As the cold came, the ootheca remained motionless, seemingly lifeless. But inside, life was quietly waiting. During winter, the embryos slept — still and protected from wind and frost. And now, with the spring sun warming the air, when the temperature reached the perfect threshold, nature sent its chemical signal.
And they — hundreds of tiny beings — began their mass awakening. Their synchronized birth is no coincidence, but a survival strategy: the more of them appear at once, the higher the chance that at least some will escape predators and survive to adulthood.
In just a few minutes, they will disperse — some to the grass, others along the wall, others into the leaves. In a couple of days, they will already be hunting — miniature yet relentless predators, designed by nature for perfect balance. I watched them and thought: how much life is around us that we simply never notice. While we sleep, eat breakfast, and rush through our days — entire universes are being born just centimeters away from us.
