Monster Bug Wars is a documentary series that features various insects, arachnids, decapods, and myrapods duking it out in a battle to the death.
This Series provides examples of:
- Ant Assault: Various species of ants feature on the show, and when in colonies, they often win.
- Ant War: The Trap Jaw Ant vs Dinosaur Ant fight.
- Antlion Monster: The trope namer itself battles and defeats a trap-jaw ant.
- Butt-Monkey: Crabs lose every fight they appear in.
- Katydids also get ragged on a lot, the smaller, non-carnivorous ones are often used to show how dangerous the featured bugs are, while the carnivorous ones are frequently outmatched by their opponents.
- Of course, the grasshoppers, crickets, and cockroaches used to show how dangerous the competitors are.
- Mantises are frequently matched against spiders that are bigger than they are, and end up getting destroyed by them.
- Creepy Centipedes: Centipedes frequently show up, and they almost always win, with only two losses from said creatures.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Several examples:
- Desert Centipede vs Trapdoor Spider: The centipede simply sticks its head into the spider’s nest and pulls it out before eating it alive.
- Any web-building spider vs anything: It generally goes, opposing bug gets stuck in spider web, spider wraps it up and bites it, then waits for the venom to take effect.
- Colonies of ants always beat a solitary opponent.
- Curb Stomp Cushion: Desert Centipede vs Desert Scorpion: The scorpion manages to fend the centipede off for a while with its pincers, but the fight goes south when it tries to retreat.
- Probably the only fights where a centipede loses, a White centipede vs a cellar spider, the centipede forces the spider to use every drop of venom and every thread of silk to bring it down. The second one, featuring a Stripe Tailed Centipede vs a Vinegaroon, ends with the Centipede having a decent brawl before the Vinegaroon clamps its claws around its head and starts devouring it from the neck first.
- Trap Jaw Ant colony vs Dinosaur Ant colony: The dinosaur ants hold out for quite a while before the Trap Jaws’ superior numbers start to win out.
- Family-Unfriendly Death: Several, but special mention goes to the owl moth caterpillar, whose body cavity is ripped open and its stomach contents spilled out on the leaf that it was battling the horned katydid on.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Several bugs lose the battle because of their own actions.
- The desert centipede vs scorpion fight takes a turn when the scorpion tries to run away, which allows the centipede to grab its tail and disarm its most dangerous weapon.
- Tree Centipede vs Balloon-winged Katydid: The Katydid hesitates when the centipede approaches it, which allows the centipede to go in for the kill.
- Assassin Bug vs Ogre-faced spider: the assassin bug tries to climb on the spider’s web, which of course gets it stuck and you can figure out the rest.
- Slaying Mantis: Zig Zagged, mantises are always built up to be cool brutal insects that eat their prey alive, but only three ever live up to it, with those being the Lichen Bark Mantis, the moss mantis, and the giant rainforest mantis.
