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Mantis is elusive to the point that she has become somewhat of a cryptid. She's immensely aggressive towards humans, and has killed many of those that are unlucky enough to cross her. Because of how her body works with the bacteria she collects from her diet, the victims usually die of disease rather than her initial attack, so it's usually ruled off as some sort of large diseased wolf/dog bite. Hikers that happened to be recording their experience have caught both her initial sighting and their death on film. The recovered tapes were all shaky, though, so the public only have a rough knowledge of her appearance and behaviour
She creates and lives in burrows- highly camouflaged holes in the ground that she rarely leaves to do anything but hunt. She is highly intelligent, and is capable of determining if she's at risk of being caught, and camouflages the entrance of the burrows carefully to avoid unwelcome visitors.
She feeds almost exclusively off of carrion. She kills her prey and then leaves it out to rot. She eats like this to keep the count of bacteria in her saliva so high that you'll either die to her or to something in the food she ate.
And she has a specialised organ that exists solely to filter out bacteria and prevent it from going into her system. It's like a hyper immune system that can destroy even the deadliest of disease as long as it doesn’t enter her system. If the organ were to be damaged or were to suddenly fail, she would immediately succumb to the countless bacteria that was once essential to her survival.
Her spit also contains anticoagulants, which thins the blood of her target and prevents it from clotting. This gives more time for her virus-infested saliva to take affect before the victim's body can even begin to respond to the initial bite wound
After inflicting a single bite, she often completely locks on. She brings the prey to the ground and holds it there, ensuring that they’ll die either from bleeding out, or from infection.
