ohhh he has an acrylic tank? lol then what the hell are we arguing about? my bad, i was under the impression the mantis was in a glass tank.
that said, a little fun fact about mantids: it's not at all like a baseball thrower or even a boxer. nope, it's more like a catapult. Mantids store energy when they **** back their raptorial appendages. See the circular marikings on the inside of their arms? they're called meral spots. These are pringle shaped rigid discs. When the raps are cocked back (like a ratchet), the "pringles" are bent and store energy like a caapult. Then they release the energy in a swing.
the end result of all that crap is the fastest animal movement recorded. Big ones like a large peacock can generate forces up to 1400N... about the same as a .22 caliber rifle bullet at muzzle velocity (before anyone asks, Dr. Roy said that himself). G. smithii, a much smaller mantis could not, of course, ever produce even close to this force. Oddly enough, a mantis quite a bit smaller than a peacock, G. chiragra, can produce glass shattering forces too.
the movement is so fast, it causes cavitation bubbles. The speed of the movement essentially vaporizes the water in front of the rap and boils it. When the swing slows, the bubble collapses and produces a "whack" load of force. These cavitation bubbles are what cause most of the force of a mantis' blow.
my long winded point is that you can't really compare mantids to humans or many other animals... they're just ridiculously highly evolved.
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