Cannibals of the Insect World 

From Smithsonian Magazine’s annual photo contest…

Takuya Ishiguro, who works as a production engineer in Osaki, Japan, was in his car on the lookout for praying mantises to photograph. “I was driving slowly,” he recalls. He pulled over and approached the insects on foot, only to realize he’d happened upon one of the insect world’s most taboo occurrences, at least from a human perspective – a praying mantis snacking on another one. “That this image was caught in such an urban setting – not in a tree, or a bush, or on any type of plant, but on the ground, on what looks like asphalt – amazing!” said Maria Keehan, Smithsonian Magazine’s creative director and a contest judge.