Mantids are hatching...

[joossa]

Some of you may know that I keep and breed a mantid species, Iris oratoria that is native to my area. Today, my batch of oothecae (egg cases) started to hatch after several months in cold storage and a couple of months in incubation....

I took some pictures.

Two ooths that were laid next to each other. Note the holes were the nymphs emerged from:

Various L1 Nymphs:

Close up:

Just before I released them into the wild this afternoon:

I didn't catch them actually emerging from the ooths, but more will come and hopefully I'll get a good shot.

 

[Ant]

Aww, so cute! I love mantids.

 

[Devon]

wow! Cool! I never heard of anyone breeding mantids! Great job.

 

[petmantis]

Wow! Very nice. Mantids rock I love keeping Pet Mantis's

 

[PeaceCarny]

I kept a Mantid once...

It was doing well in its tank until it escaped when I was handling it.

Great job breeding them by the way!

 

[USMCSKI]

That is frigin awesome!!!
I need a pet like that!!

 

[Capensis]

Lol, they're so cute. :3

 

[joossa]

I caught some emerging out of the ooth right before their first molt...

 

[SirKristoff]

Lol Joel, are you also using icecream tubs?! XDDD
thats what im usin...im scared to seperate these Tenodora nymphs..... so many of em XD
guess im just going to have to keep feeding em.

 

[joossa]

I'm using 32oz deli cups. They are good for keeping nymphs.

You know... a lot of people just keep the nymphs together and feed them FF. Yes, cannibalism will occur. Once they get down to a manageable amount, then they separate them into individual containers. Knowing Tenodera hatch rates though, you probably have so many nymphs that you'll have to separate them just to give them room in their enclosure!


Here are some various housing containers I use. Window screen mesh is a blessing!

Front view:

Back view:

 

[SirKristoff]

i hear you on the mesh man, i use it for my mantids too as im sure you saw in the photos lol.
Well this ooth im sure had a parasite..had a rather large hole in it
but i still got a 150-200 or so nymph turn out. feeding em flightless fruitflies.

 

[joossa]

I have some nice females now:

Budwings:

Defense pose!!!!

 

[SirKristoff]

last group i saw was about 4 weeks ago before i left
i assume they all left or died since i released them all.

 

[larry]

Oh cool, I found one of these the other day and took some pics. It was about an inch long. They got crazy eyes! It was facing away from me and yet turned it's eyeballs around to look at me. Question, how come sometimes their eyeballs are brown/green and at other times they're red?

 

[joossa]

last group i saw was about 4 weeks ago before i left
i assume they all left or died since i released them all.

That's too bad. Keep your eye open though, you never know...

Oh cool, I found one of these the other day and took some pics. It was about an inch long. They got crazy eyes! It was facing away from me and yet turned it's eyeballs around to look at me. Question, how come sometimes their eyeballs are brown/green and at other times they're red?

Brown/green with a little black dot inside should be the normal look for them during the day. Once it starts getting dark in their environment, they're eyes will completely turn red or black. This is normal as it helps increase their visual capabilities for hunting and mating at night. If the environment is transitioning to night, like at twilight, the eyes will only be partially red/black and have a soft red/black color like in that third picture I posted.

You could almost think of it like how the human eye functions with the pupil enlarging to let in more light in dark areas. However, the ways this works in mantids is still not known well.

Post some of your pictures. I bet they are much better than mine, and I would love to see them!!

 

[larry]

Wow, that explains it. When I first started taking pictures, there was still some light out. Later that night I took more pictures and noticed it's eyes were red, thought it was a different mantis.

 

[joossa]

Very beautiful, Larry. Thanks for sharing!

 

[Millipede]

LOL! if i were single i would have all kinds of jars like that all over my house! prretty cool

 

[joossa]

...and look at what happened yesterday! Sorry for the bad photo... I didn't want to disturb them too much.

 

[theyellowdart]

bom chicka wah wah!

Did the female eat the male? Or is that some other insect that does that? lol