What’s With All The Praying Mantises?

What’s with all the praying mantises? I found one in the lobby of my office building in downtown Denver this week and heard about two different friends finding one as well. One found one outside and the other in her house. Doesn’t this seem like a lot of people encountering praying mantises?

I mean, I know there aren’t huge numbers of these things. I hear they aren’t as rare as people think, just being good at camouflage and staying out of places people would encounter them. Still, I think I’ve only seen maybe a couple praying mantises in my life. It just seems like many more people than normal are talking about running across them in a short amount of time.

Is there a mantis population explosion? Is there some weird event causing them to encounter humans more? Has so much mantis habitat vanished that they’re starting to come into our houses and workplaces because there is nowhere else?

Probably nothing weird is going on. It just seems like a lot of people I know have encountered a praying mantis in the last week. It probably really doesn’t mean anything out of the ordinary.