I’m in Japan and we have a ton of grasshoppers. I can’t step in the grass near my garden without seeing some jumping around. Mantis are tricky, really hard to see them but when you are so close they look at you like you don’t belong there. Creepy.
I'm also extremely grateful that they're smaller than us. A dog sized mantis would be the stuff of nightmares and horse sized mantises would pretty much have guaranteed our extinction long before now.