The praying mantis has spent over a century as biology's textbook case of sexual cannibalism, and this macro-photography study spends a hundred days with the insect testing whether that reputation holds up. Cameras catch stages of the mantis life cycle rarely filmed before: copulation, egg-case laying, hatching, and moulting, along with the full intimidation display a mantis performs when a predator closes in, wings flared and forelegs raised. The film also surveys the wider mantis family, some 2,200 species worldwide, concentrated in the tropics and subtropics with a few pushing into temperate zones, including a Sri Lankan species that reaches ten inches and, like large South American relatives, can take small birds and reptiles along with insects. Despite having wings, mantises do not migrate, and they fly mostly at night, which puts them within reach of bats. Females lay one generation's worth of egg cases each autumn. The cannibalism question runs through all of it, with the answer withheld until the final stretch of footage.