MUST SEE: Praying Mantis Obliterates ‘Murder Hornet’ in Viral Video

There’s no denying it; 2020 has been one weird year so far.

First off, it’s an election year for America, which always seems to bring some high strangeness to the table.

Then, quite obviously, we are dealing with a global pandemic the likes of which the world hasn’t seen in perhaps a century or more.  Thanks to the internet, there have been no shortage of conspiracy theories floated in regard to COVID-19, which adds just another layer of intrigue to the mystique of 2020.

And who could forget that, just when we started to think about bringing some normalcy back to the United States, we have been thrown a nasty, stinging curveball known as “murder hornets”:  Enormous flying insects whose venom is potent enough to kill a human being, and who have now been spotted in America for the first time.

There are few creatures out there who can tangle with these murder hornets without suffering a swift and certain death, and the praying mantis appears to be one of them.

Wild video posted online shows a giant Asian hornet finally meeting its match: a brain-gobbling praying mantis.

The clip starts with the mantis completely still as its five eyes patiently watch the hornet — an insect that can grow to 2 inches long, is known to kill up to 50 people a year in Japan, and recently arrived in the US.

The mantis suddenly springs forward with its long, modified front legs, keeping a vise-like grip on the doomed hornet, which twists and tries to turn its head in feeble attempts to put up a fight.

The long-legged carnivore then starts pecking away at the hornet — eventually eating its head and brains.

The gruesome video can be seen below:

And while most civilized folks prefer to keep their schadenfreude to themselves, there’s just something so hopeful about witnessing the complete obliteration of these flying death machines that we can’t help it.