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"Strikingly, many of the horsehair worm genes that could play important roles in manipulating their hosts were very similar to mantid genes, suggesting that they were acquired through horizontal gene transfer," says Mishina.

In the worms, some of the transfers apparently happened long ago, allowing the worm and mantid sequences to diverge from one another by 5% or more.

For the mantid, both spiders were fair game.

Hunting is a professional trademark of the mantid order: the 2,500 known species are all predators, usually of insects and other small invertebrates.

Instead, there is the dull, repetitive whack of shin or elbow or fist on flesh, among which Li moves with a mantid’s coiled tension.