Mantis

The Mantis is one of the Creatures in ARK: Survival Evolved. It was added in the Scorched Earth DLC on September 1, 2016, and included with the Ragnarok expansion on June 12, 2017, also included in Genesis Part 2 on June 3rd, 2021.

Behavior
Highly aggressive, it attacks any medium-size or smaller creature that enters its range.

Appearance
It looks just like an average Mantis but much larger and deadlier. It usually comes from a light green to a brown or a yellowish color.

General
Mantis spawn in packs of around 2-3 individuals within caves and desert dunes. Due to their pounce attack they have a fairly large aggression range. Once one Mantis spots prey, the others usually follow. They will attempt to rapidly close the distance with an initial pounce before delivering an onslaught of rapid slashing attacks.

Strategy
Avoid close combat unless you have a strong enough mount, or good gear. Due to the fact they spawn in packs they may often be mate-boosted, increasing the power of their fast and deadly attacks. If you don't think you can stand a close-up fight, range attacks with fire arrows or other powerful projectiles should do the trick easily.

Weaponry
One might consider using a Bow or a Boomerang to keep the mantises at bay and possibly knock it out for running away, or even building a trap around it to tame later. A Rock Elemental would be a great bodyguard in case there are too many to fight.

Dangers
BEWARE of Pounce at Mid Range: with Mantis often spawning in groups of 2-3, taking three hits of this powerful attack can deal tremendous damage. Mantis are powerful melee attackers when wild, avoid close-quarters combat unless with good gear or a sufficient mount.

Weakness
Its main weakness is bug repellant because it will enable you to attack the Mantis without being noticed if you're careful. Fire Arrows from a crossbow deal massive damage sometimes killing high levels (100+) with a single arrow from a primitive crossbow. However it is not an instant kill. It will take a few seconds but when attacking from a range there is very little to fear when using fire arrows.

Taming Strategy
The Mantis is a passive tame, so avoid knockout methods.

To feed it, place a or  in the last slot of your hotbar, then when approached press "use" (default ) to feed it. You cannot feed them all the horns required for taming at one time, you must wait a few minutes after each feeding to give it the next one, and repeat until the taming meter is filled.

The Mantis is normally aggressive, so is needed in order to get close enough to feed it. A set of is also useful, but not required. The Mantis becomes aggressive if you are too close. The taming progress will become halted until it loses interest in whatever it was fighting, or even decrease if it's aggressive for too long.

A good trap to tame the Mantis is a single foundation (Stone, Adobe, or Metal) with 4 walls on the first level, and 3 walls on the second level. Lastly add two ramps to the last opening on the second level. Part of the Mantis will stick outside of the trap and you can feed it. You will not need any or  with this method.

Note: On the Ragnarok map, you can get the horns from the s in the desert or from the s in the Frozen Dungeon, where they provide a plentiful supply. However, given the high level of this dungeon, it might be safer to go to the desert.

Roles
With high quality clubs and mutation stacking it can tame even high level rexes and brontos. A decent saddle is not necessary but strongly recommended.
 * Utility Gatherer: The Mantis can equip a pick or hatchet, or even a sickle, allowing it to gather resources using these tools rather effectively when one does not have specialized mounts for such. Due to its ability to equip tools the Mantis can be used as a mobile light source by equipping it with a torch.
 * Soldier/Shock Trooper: The ability for the Mantis to wield melee weapons, including the sword, allows it to be a fearsome combatant, but this also allows them to change up their tactics entirely by using a club, inflicting torpor damage against opponents as needed. Better weapons from better blueprints can massively increase the effectiveness of the mount's attacks, making this one of the only mounts where the quality of items other than the saddle is of great consequence.
 * Taming Mount: Using simply primitive clubs, a high-level Mantis with average melee damage can knock out a mid-level scorpion (or even another Mantis) with a pounce and a few standard bash attacks. With higher end clubs and higher melee, the increased torpor could allow for Mantis to be used on more difficult tames.
 * Turkey Killer: While wielding a Sword, Pike or similar weapon, The Mantis ignores the damage reduction of the, making them perfect for mass turkey slaughter during the Turkey Trial event.
 * Boss DPS: A highly mutated mantis can be (mainly on boosted unofficial servers) a great DPS in boss fights, possibly outperforming any other dino that can enter boss arenas in terms of both DPH and DPS. Spamming the jump (right click) attack can do massive damage to anything in its path. It can be particularly useful against the as it is so small that when below it, the  will not be able to do damage to it (beware of its minions). You have to, however, pay close attention to positioning of the boss and other tames/players not to get killed. You can also use a  for its grab ability and use two mate-boosted   either whistling them to attack or having someone ride them, sadly, this disables the jump (right click) attack, which can seriously throttle the damage output. Mutate mainly for melee, level melee. Use a high quality  or  ( is recommended).

Collectibles
Even though it looks like the Mantis is holding two tools/weapons, only a single one may be equipped at any time (the doubling is only visual).

Bugs

 * When you leap with a tamed Mantis then move far enough away to unload the Mantis, it will constantly generate a wind effect that is triggered from leaping; the audio will endlessly loop until you make the Mantis leap again, which will stop the looping sound effect. This doesn’t fix it permanently, however, as it reoccurs every time the mantis gets unloaded and loaded again. To fix this, either log out and back in, or put the mantis into a cryopod. This bug seems to only occur in single player.
 * When the saddle absorbs damage, the tool/weapon the mantis is holding will have its durability consumed, as if it were a piece of armor.

Notes/Trivia

 * The Mantis are one of if not the most intelligent creature in Ark even to the point of creating strategies that's only rivaled by and the  and is only for certain outmatched by, ,  and.
 * This is shown as according to the Mysterious Mystery Dossier, it's very intelligent, with four tick-marks for intelligence. The only other creature with four ticks is Troodon.
 * Also similar to Troodon, the taming icon has a tick and an x, implying that it must be tamed in a unique way, as Troodon and Titanosaur are.
 * This is also backed up as Dahkeya, in one of his explorer notes, reports that a group of Mantis destroyed a water pipe outside of town; knowing it would draw humans to come out to fix it, so the Mantis could hunt and feed. This shows extreme intelligence on the behalf of Ark's Mantis that perhaps even the Troodon doesn't have.
 * Finally It also has a picture of the Crafting icon with two ticks, meaning that it can hold tools in its hands and the only other creatures shown to have enough intelligence to use tools is Humans.
 * Like Karkinos and to a lesser extent Pulminoscorpius, a tamed Mantis prefers spoiled meat over raw and gains more Food and Health from it.
 * You need to be at least level 40 to feed a Mantis.
 * It's confirmed that the creature's alternate attack has increased harvesting capabilities.
 * The dossier states that the Mantis may have their own language. Although this may seem far-fetched, many animals seem to have their own system of "language". Prairie Dogs have distinctly different warning calls for different predators; and Orcas from different parts of the world seem to have different "dialects", even "accents" in their calls and songs.
 * There exist fossils of multiple giant species of praying mantis of the order "Titanoptera" (the most well-known member being the Gigatitan), living in the Triassic period. However, this insect was much smaller than ARK's Mantis.
 * Another species of praying mantis, "Santanmantis", was thought to have lived in the Jurassic period. However, much like the Titanoptera, the Santanmantis was smaller than ARK's Mantis.
 * Despite both the Titanoptera and Santanmantis being smaller than the Mantis found in Ark both were giant insects when compared to the modern Praying Mantis.
 * Another thing both Titanoptera and Santanmantis pre date the Holocene period where the Ark's Mantis comes from according to Helena's notes.
 * Mantis do not produce.
 * Despite having wings it is not capable of flight.
 * Prior to 316.18, Mantis couldn't be bred and would lay unfertilized eggs.
 * While in the Dossier it is shown to have small hands at the second joint in their arm, and this is supposed to be how it holds items, it does not match the in game model.
 * While a Mantis can wield a Lance, it does lower damage than without wielding one.