These amazing looking insects are GRIFFIN MANTIDS which originate from Cameroon in west Africa.  Like all species of praying mantis they are excellent predators, and have fantastic eyesight to be able to watch out for suitable prey animals coming their way!  Their eyes are large and a bit funny looking to most people, but they do a superb job of allowing them to keep a close eye on the insects and other small animals they like to eat!  The pictures below are of a male griffin mantis:

In the next picture, the male mantis is cleaning his front foot using his mouthparts.  When I watch mantids cleaning themselves I often think it looks a little bit like a cat licking its paws.  It is a very important job as the front legs in particular need to be kept clean so that the spines, which you can also see below, are at their best ready for catching insects and other prey items!

In this final picture of the male you can see how well-developed his wings are, and he is very good at flying as I discovered when I first opened the box in which he had arrived with me.  He immediately flew to the ceiling and was quite tricky to get down, but once he was safely sat on my hand he calmed right down ready for his photoshoot!

The following pictures are of the female griffin mantis and as you can see she is a lot less colourful than the male, something which is quite common in the natural world.  She is slightly larger overall however and very powerful, which is why males have to be very careful when mating as the female mantis very often overpowers and then eats the male! 

In this final picture you can see the female griffin mantis eating a cricket.  Once the cricket has been captured by the sharp spines on the front legs there is no chance of escape at all, and here you can see that she has used her powerful mouthparts to chew the leg off of the cricket.  They eat almost the entire animal over a period of 5 - 15 minutes depending on its size, the only parts sometimes left behind being the wing cases of adult crickets.