Mantis Foreleg

The mantis foreleg is a miscellaneous item in Fallout: New Vegas.

Characteristics
It is found on dead giant mantises, giant mantis females and giant mantis nymphs and all variations of Zion mantises and is one of the ingredients used at a campfire to create the grilled mantis.

Bugs

 * As of Patch 1.2.0.31x, swapping this item between certain companions (ED-E and Boone, specifically) in certain locations (Vault 11 and Vault 22, specifically) will grant the player 20XP (base) each swap. This is also possible on the first floor of Nipton's town hall when moving any amount of mantis forelegs between the player and any of the containers there. Also happens with suitcase next to the door in the Courier's Novac motel room.
 * You can gain 100xp per "trade" if you kill a giant radscorpion and swap the legs between you and it. Interestingly enough this action produces the same audible and visible thorax explosion upon the radscorpion as it does on the mantis.
 * These "trades" give odd experience because the legs are scripted to "kill" the mantis that they were retrieved from in order to dismember it. However, this kill is attributed to the player.
 * Likewise, the script is not particularly good at determining where the leg came from. It works sort of like this:
 * When a Mantis Foreleg is added to someone's inventory, it checks to see if it was an insect's inventory that it was added to. If it is, it sets that insect as it's "container".
 * When a Mantis Foreleg is removed from something's inventory, it issues a command to kill the legs' "container" twice by removing it's left and right forelegs.
 * The "killing" of the "container" awards the player experience as though he'd killed the monster himself. So, for instance, assume you were to get mantis leg, and kill a giant radscorpion, and place the leg on the radscorpion.  That giant radscorpion would now become the Mantis Legs' "container".  From that point on, any time you moved it out of an inventory, it would issue a "kill" command to that radscorpion (blowing up it's front claws) and assign exp to the player. The container that you move it out of is irrelevant, as long as you don't move it into another Mutated Insect's inventory.  As soon as you move it to a different Mutated Insect's inventory, that insect will become the foreleg's "container" and your trades will give experience based on that (and blow up ITS legs).
 * The reason this is only noticeable generally in Vault 11 and Vault 22 is because those vaults contain the giant mantises that are scripted to have legs added to their inventory after spawn time. It's unusual for players to place items back on insect corpses, so they are the only legs that have "containers" specified when you get them. But it works when the player puts a mantis leg on any insect, anywhere, and the experience is granted after moving the leg out of any inventory, not just on trades between specific characters.
 * This bug can effectively be exploited to gain unlimited experience, indefinitely, by constantly swapping the mantis foreleg from the player's inventory to an insect's inventory. The swapping window does not need to be closed to gain experience. Note that one must close the swapping window to level up. One can use this while still in the Goodsprings starting area to greatly increase the number of perks that the PC can take (see exploits page).
 * This infinite experience bug can also be performed using the ammunition container on the counter to the right inside of Victor's shack in Goodsprings. (Other containers possible as well, further testing needed)