Week 1

This is the Mantis in the first week of receiving it. It is walking along one of my work folders. Upon receiving it i tried feeding it a small cricket but the Mantis ran away as soon as saw it! I tried again later having accidently crippled the cricket whilst removing it from its cage. I made the mistake of putting both insects on my bed to observe them better. Sure enough the Mantis crept up on the cricket and snapped it up. It took about 20 mins to eat it and it left a mess of excretion and cricket parts on my bed!

Tip 1: Don’t feed your Mantis where you don’t want a mess.

Week 2

This is the second week of receiving my Mantis. I have offered it about 4 or 5 crickets this week and it has eaten them all. It is becoming quicker at eating; it used to take about 20 mins to eat each crickets but now it takes about 12 mins. It is slightly bigger now because it shed its skin in the night time. Its increase in size has enabled me to establish its gender; i have counted 8 segments on its underside so it is male. Next to the Mantis in the picture is a one penny piece to show its reletive size.

Tip 2: Mantids can jump! Although not very far, the Mantis jumped around twice its body length but its quite impresive. When it is an adult, it will not need to jump since it will be able to fly.

Week 3

This is the third week of receiving my Mantis. This is a picture of it standing on its cage lid swaying back and forth. Again this week I have fed it quite a lot, it seems to have quite a large appetite! I have tried to vary its diet by feeding it other insects from the garden such as crane flies, house flies and a garden cricket aswell as its usual brown house crickets.

Tip 3: Feeding Mantids with tweezers every now and then saves a lot of time and makes feeding much easier for the Mantis. Use tweezers to hold an insect by its legs or wings and put it in front of the Mantis. It will snatch the insect straight off. Be aware that Mantids sometimes prefer to catch insects themselves so don’t hand feed them all the time.

Week 4

This is the fourth week of receiving my Mantis. It has molted again, making it exactly two weeks since the last one. I managed to get a picture of the moulting so I have placed it in the Life/Anatomy section of the site. The above picture shows the Mantis on an upside down lid holding a small cricket. Its true green colour is becoming more apparent with every moult. I have fed it mainly crickets this week with a house fly and a small earwig. It now measures roughly 4cm long.

Tip 4: Trying to handle a Mantis can be quite hard. Mantids should not be picked up or they may attack your hand. They can usually be handled by allowing it to crawl on to a hand. Mantids like to go up high so they can see all around them. For this reason, when i handle the Mantis, it always tries to climb to the highest point of my body. This fact enables one to handle the Mantis more easily. By placing your hand in front of the Mantis in a vertical position, it should crawl to the top. Make sure to keep your hand away from your face and pointed upwards or it will try to climb up your arm or it could jump on to your face.

Week 5

This is the fifth week of receiving my Mantis. I have bought a new cage Apogee Reptarium (22g) cage. The picture above shows the Mantis on its new cage. It is very spacious and the Mantis gets excellent grip on the netting cover. I had some problem keeping up the humidity level at first but soon had it fixed. The Mantis does not like being handled quite as much as it used to, but i can still have it crawl on to my hand without too much fuss. You can just about see the underside of its abdomen turning a darkish white colour. This means it will be moulting very soon; probably within the next day or two.

Tip 5: Maintaining humidity can be quite tricky; especially in netting cages. Placing a plastic container filled with clean gravel and water can greatly increase the humidity. The gravel is placed in the container to prevent the Mantis or its food from drowning if it falls in. A sweet tub or something similar in surface area would be good (10cm x 10cm). The Mantis cage will still need to be sprayed on a daily basis. Beware of making the humidity too high, this can lead to problems such as an increased risk of disease.

Week 6

This is the sixth week of receiving my Mantis. It has shed its skin again this week making it exactly 16 days since the last moult. It now measures roughly 5cm in length. I have fed it mainly on crickets with some moths and flies. The picture shows the Mantis eating a cricket the day after moulting. A one penny piece can be seen in the background to show its relative size. You can count the number of segments on its abdomen if you look closely.

Tip 6: Feed your Mantis a variety of food to keep it healthy. In the wild, Mantids would feed on a large variety of other insects so it makes sense to try and vary its diet as much as possible. Moths and flies (such as lacewings) can be caught by leaving a light on when it is dark outside. They will gather around the light making them easy to catch.

Week 7

This is the seventh week of receiving my Mantis. I have fed it on crickets and Hover flies this week since there are a lot of Hover flies around beacuse it has been so hot. They do not make a very big meal but they are plentiful so I fed the Mantis a few at a time. I have noticed new defensive postures used by the Mantis now. Recently, when I disturbed it, it reared itself back and raised its Prothoracic legs diagonally upwards and to the sides. I have never seen it use this posture before now. After I went closer to take a better look it sprung up and backflipped off the top of my wardrobe and landed on my bed below.

Tip 7: When it is hot outside, spray sugar solution on the ground near some flowers and leave it for about an hour. When you come back you should find that it is swarming with insects, especially Hover flies. They can then be scooped up and used to feed your Mantis. Along with Crickets, capturing these in the day and moths and flies at night should provide a diet of Crickets, Moths, Hover Flies, House flies and Lacewings which is a good diet for almost any Mantis.

Week 8

This is the eighth week of receiving my Mantis. As you can see from this weeks picture, the underside of The Mantid’s abdomen is turning dark white again. This means that it is going to moult very soon so I have not been able to do much in the way of photography or handling since Mantids must be left alone near and during moulting. Its diet this week has only consisted of two crickets and a large moth.

Tip 8: Mantids like to drink! Daily spraying gives Mantids the water they need to survive, however, Mantids will readily drink water offered to them. Whilst the Mantis is on your hand or outside of its cage, gently spray some water a short distance in front of it and watch  it lean down and drink. Its mouth parts move very quickly, its quite funny to watch.

Week 9

This is the Ninth week of receiving my Mantis. As expected, the Mantis shed its skin again making it exactly 19 days since the last moult. It is getting quite big now measuring 6cm and its wings are starting to develop; each measuring about 0.5cm. Because it is so much larger now, I am now able to feed it adult crickets (about 2cm long). I have chosen not to handle it as much anymore since it could give me a nasty bite if it wanted to. I now let it out of its cage a couple of time a week for observation and so it can walk around freely. There will be no weekly tips anymore since I have chosen to focus on more interesting and larger weekly pictures as well as more detailed logs.

These are pictures of a Philipinno Marbled Mantis Nymph. It is the same age as the Hierodula Membranacea but it is a female. This species is generally smaller in length but being a female nymph, it is more stocky. It has been through 3 moults since it has been received and it has ranged from light green in colour to a very deep turquoise.

Week 10

This is the Tenth week of receiving my Mantis. I have taken it out of its cage quite a lot this week, it has not shown any kind of aggressive behaviour towards me at all so I have been able to handle it. I usually let it crawl along my arms or hands, it always likes to try and crawl up to my face but it has never got that far. Its diet this week has consisted of the usual crickets, crane flies and moths. I am expecting it to moult next week sometime as the time gap between each moult increases as it gets older.

Week 11

This is the Eleventh week of receiving my Mantis. I am expecting it to moult sometime soon, maybe this weekend. I have fed it on crane flies, lacewings, crickets and moths this week. After one of its feedings (a moth), it looked like it had grown some sort of facial hair like a Mantis beard because fluff from the moths back had stuck to its face. I have installed a new polystyrene insulater under its cage with a heat matt since it is starting to get a bit colder. It sounds technical but its really just a polystyrene lid off a box (high budget).

Week 12

This is the Twelfth week of receiving my Mantis. Well I was expecting it to moult anytime because it hadn’t eaten for days but it took a cricket today so it looks like it won’t be moulting until next week sometime. I haven’t been able to handle it or take any good photos because i didn’t want to disturb it during moulting time. It has only eaten two crickets this week but they were both adult size so they were big meals. I will post a new pic as soon as it has moulted. You can see its wings developing quite clearly now.

Week 13

This is the Thirteenth week of receiving my Mantis. As you can see it has finally moulted into an adult! This explains why it took so long to moult (30 days). It has two pairs of large wings now, the forewings being lime green in colour. I have yet to see it open its wings to fly or display but it is still a bit weak after the moult. Its amazing how such large wings came from those little bud wings seen in last weeks pic. I have fed him on a Cricket and a Crane fly so far and I have been handling him loads. He now measures just under 85mm, an amazing 2.5cm growth in his last moult.

Week 14

This is the forteenth week of receiving my Mantis. Its wing cases are developing more of a pattern and they are turning more deep green. It has only opened its wings once so far and that was for a split second. It has not shown any aggresive behaviour towards me at whatsoever so I have been able to handle it as usual. The crickets that it is eating are adult size so I have been feeding him one every 3 days which seems to be just the right amount.