It IS interesting. My reaction was to the blog post , not you or your link to it. I already knew that the diet of the mantis family included more than just insects. The blog did choose the format of whether the mantis was a friend or foe and sided soundly on the side of them being a foe. One of my buttons to push is anthropomorphism. Really a mantis is neither friend nor foe. It's an organism doing what comes naturally. In that sense what it does may be something you like or something you don't like, but it's actions aren't directed toward people or even against it food sources except they are food. There is no friend or foe aspect to it. Though differential grasshoppers aren't welcome here and do a lot of damage to things I put some effort into, I wouldn't call them a foe exactly. Not every grasshopper here, and there are many varieties, are as damaging as the differential. I tend to try and encourage things that see grasshoppers as a food source.
