Well, it's 5/31/99. It has been two weeks since I set up the 20 gallon fish tank with two praying mantis egg cases in some branches. Although I increased the temperature to 80F (by installing a 40 watt light bulb in the tank) for about a week now, the Oothecas (egg cases) haven't changed a bit. The numerous fruit fly cultures I made are beginning to mature with the formation of lots of pupaes. These flies are great because they can't fly, so this makes handling these small insects much easier. I think I'm going to end up with a lot of flies if these mantises don't hatch soon!

6/6/99: They are everywhere!! After getting back late from a weekend trip, we found numerous mantises crawling around inside the enclosure. I was surprised by their large size (1/2 inch long) and their speed. I counted about 70 of them, and more are still emerging from only one of the oothecas (see the new pictures in the second row above). I released several hundred flies into the terrarium, and the mantids promptly started to feed on them. These mantids are yellow when first emerging from the egg case, and they look like small worms with two trailing appendages on their sides. These crawl off the egg case and hang by a thin silk then the young mantids immediately emerge head first by splitting the cocoon open. These young mantids look like very small adults, but are all white in color. Few of these are born with neck deformatives with the head flipped back on the neck, but even these manage to catch fruit flies and feed normally. After hanging onto a branch for a few minutes, the mantids will feed on any flightless fruit fly that happens to walk in front of it. The flies are snatched up rapidly with the first set of specialized legs (mantids like all true insects have six legs). Food in the body makes the mantis opaque to light, so fed mantids look darker. I watched one mantis eat 5 flies consecutively. These are truely voracious insects.

6/12/99: About a week after hatching most of these insects grew to 1 inch by molting. The molting process only takes 3-5 minutes. The mantis starts molting by hanging upside down from a suitable branch motionlessly, since these are fairly stationary insects anyway it's impossible to tell which one was going to molt next. Just as in the first molt the skin around the head splits open and the whiter & much bigger manits slides out. I couldn't figure out how the bigger insect fitted inside the old shell, even though I watched about a dozen molting from start to finish.

6/13/99: The second eggcase hatched today. I was horrified to see the older second molt mantids greedily chomping on the new hatchlings. I probably loss half of the new hatch to cannibalism, so I started to isolate the bigger ones in their own enclosures. Because I now have to feed and water each isolated individual, this little project is escalating into a lot of work. Also, I can't believe I'm running low on flies.

6/17/99: Some of the mantids went through their third molt, and they are now over 1 1/4 inches long. Although I've been isolating these bigger ones when possible, a lot of the smaller ones are been eaten. As a result of this cannibalism I now only have about 100 out of about 200 mantises left. I guess the good news is that the isolated mantids are doing quite well. Some have even molted successfully in the small containers. I discovered that high humidity/moisture in the containers are critical in promoting successful molting. It appears that low humidity causes the old skin to stick to the legs, and fatal deformaties can result when the new exoskeleton hardens in about 20 minutes. I have been spraying the manitds with water everyday, but I think I'll start spraying them twice per day.

6/21/99: Many mantids have gone through their 4th molt, and now they are about 1 1/2 inches long. About half of these are green and the other half brown. These bigger mantids seem to prefer to eat smaller mantids over fruit flies. This is probably because the smaller mantids provide a bigger meal than a tiny fruit fly. So, I'm isolating every one of these larger mantises and I'm feeding them with small crickets that I buy from pet shops or with leaf hoppers that I catch on my lawn. I purchased one of the books from Amazon.com link below. It's called "Backyard Hunter, the praying mantis". Although written for kids, I found the pictures to be just excellent. I traded some of the mantis for 2 spiny walking sticks (see the link for Extatosoma on my home page). I'll probably reduce my mantis population down to a more managable 5 or less, so if you want one, e-mail me now!!!

6/24/99: All the manitids are doing very well. The key is high humidity, and letting them select the right temperature by having a gradient available in their environment. Most of these are still about 1 1/2 inches long. They don't seem to molt as often now that they are bigger. It must be that surface/length/volume ratio thing again. Also I'm noticing that they don't always eat everyday now.

I've giving away mantis to anybody who wants one (actually only to those who seems capable of taking care of one). I'm down to about 60, but it's still a lot of work taking care of these. All of the isolated manitids are taking 1/4 inch crickets now, which makes feeding a little easier because I only have to feed them once a day. The ones in the Mantis Arena (that's what I'm calling the 20 gallon tank now) are still eating fruit flies and each other. It's interesting to see a lot of different color patterns on these mantids. Some are all green while some are all brown, and then you have ones with different shade between these two colors. I found 3 or 4 green ones with a nice red Nike swoosh kind of stripes on each side. I gave the best one to my buddy Cdog. You can see it on his webcam link below.

6/27/99: I have set up an aquarium with 6 compartments with 6 selected praying mantises. I call it the mantis condo. These lucky 6 mantids will be living it up under ideal conditions with all the crickets they can eat. We will see how big they can get.

7/1/99: So far I managed to give or traded away about 50 mantises, about half the the remaining 34 mantids have completed their 5th molt. As can be seen in the latest series of photos, most of these are just over 2 inches but several of them are about 2 1/2 inches long. I'm still spraying the mantids daily, and I try to keep 2-3 live crickets in each container at all times. This means leaving food in the containers for the crickets. I found fish flake food works well for this purpose. A temperature range between 70-85F seem to suit these mantids.

I've lost 2 mantises because of failed moltings. Both deaths occured because the mantids did not have enough vertical room for them to drop out of their old skin. It feels terrible to lose these mantids after all the hard work I put into them. However, now I realize that these mantids need a lot of vertical room when molting. A suitable branch with a minimum height of 3 body length is required for successful molting to occur. Since I was told these Sinensis will get to be 4-5 inches in length, they will need at least 12 inches of vertical room for their last molt. 5 out of the 6 mantids in the Mantis Condo molted using the window screen on the top of the fish tank. Perhaps this might work for all the mantids.

7/3/99: These are 2 pictures of my favorite mantis. It's a big brown morph named Darth Maul. It's usually reddish brown with black spots, but it just molted yesterday so it looks lighter in color. My friend Kang came over with a car load of hi tech cameras, and took 3 rolls of pictures of the mantids. Hopefully, I'll have some of these up on this page soon.

7/16/99: Most of my 24 or so mantids have gone through their 6th molt in the last several days. Their new size ranges from 2 1/2 to 3 inches long, and small wings are begining to form. I suspect these 2 pairs of wings will get bigger with each molt from now on. I noticed that the mantids kept at higher temperatures ate more & grew faster (duh... but I thought I note that here anyway). The largest ones are from the Mantis Condo, where I keep the lights on all the time. I feed each mantid 1-3 half inch crickets daily, and I also mist them daily as well. Some times the water spray startles the mantids, but they usually stay put and drink the droplets off their legs. Yes, these mantids do drink water, so don't let anyone tell you they don't need water! I also read on a Japanese website that these Sinensis (Chinese mantis) will go through a total of 12 molts.

7/25/99: Three of the mantids molted for the 7th time. Right after the molt the wings were just fat small stubs, but within the next hour or so they stretched out into full sets of wings (see picture above). 2 days later the wings proved to be functional. I don't see how they can molt again with full wings. These winged mantids range in length from 3 1/2 to just under 4 inches; however, I have other ones that have not gone through the 7th molt that are more than 3 1/2 inches long. I expect these to get to be about 4 1/2 inches long after they molt. I determined that the three winged mantids are 2 males and 1 female. Sexing them is not difficult once you have both sexes next to each other. The males have 7 segments plus the last one (8 total), and the females have 6 plus the last segment (7 total) that looks like a short tube. Also the female's abdomen is much wider with pronounced ridges on the sides. I plan to mate one of the males to the female after both a re well fed.

Some of the mantids have had their abdomen droop down vertically as if whatever support for the abdomen had failed. I found this syndrome isn't always fatal. Some affected mantids live on happily with their abdomen folding and unfolding depending on their positions while others withered and died.

8/28/99: I had two males named Luke and Qui-gon (the star of Cdog's Mantis Cam), and two females named Queen (the biggest mantis I have) and Darth Vader (ok, I did screw up on the name, but I thought it was a male at first). Anyway, on a fine August morning Qui-gon was put into a Critter keeper with Darth Vader, and instantly Qui-gon knew what had to be done. After a slow, deliberate, tense filled approach he successfully mounted Darth Vader without getting killed first. They went at it all day and all night. Miraculously he was alive and well the next morning, so I moved him back to his own chamber.

Next it was Lukes turn to fulfill his destiny with Queen. After putting Luke and Queen together in the nuptial Critter Keeper, I had to go eat my breakfast. When I returned about 30 minutes later, Queen had her breakfast of Luke's head and neck while they were still coupled! As my whole family watched on, Queen methodically ate Luke until they became uncoupled. Since I wasn't sure if Luke had done his job, I decided to sent in Qui-gon while Queen is preoccupied with Luke. The experienced insect stud knew exactly what to do. He quickly got behind Queen and hung on for his life. They mated all day and all night, but I'm sad to report that Qui-gon did not survive his second mating. Apparantly, Queen was still hungry after finishing Luke. She ate until there was nothing but wings and some legs were left of the males. I guess now we wait for the making of the oothecas.

09/15/99: Last week one of the female mantis (the smaller one) died mysteriously. It was fine one day, then dead the next day with no changes in its enviroment. I thought maybe the mantids needed more warmth for the eggs to develop properly within the female, so I moved the light closer to the remaining female during the day. However, the larger female also died yesterday. Both of these dead females were very swollen with eggs when they died. One of the males is still doing well, although he has not been that interested in food since his last molt into a fully grown adult.

Since I don' have any more female mantids, I'm concluding this project without documenting the production of oothecas. However, I am including pictures of a female mantis laying eggs. These pictures are from the book by Bianca Lavies called "Backyard Hunter-The praying mantis" published by Puffin Unicorn (see the links page for Cool books on praying mantis). It has been fun making this web page. Please feel free to e-mail me with any questions or suggestions. I will continue to answer all e-mails, but it might take a little while to get my reply. Thanks for your interest.

5/12/00: My friend, Chip, managed to collect 6 oothecas from one of the mantises I gave him last year, and the eggs have hatched. We now have our second generation of tenodera sinensis!