GLASS MANTIS! See food enter stomach (video)

Sinomantis denticulata L3 and still clear!

Some cool light blue/green designs make it look like something out of Tron!













When it eats you can see the food travel through its body!

Wow! Thats awesome! :blink:

Very cool mantids, they look seriously fun to photograph.

where the heck are you getting bees this time of year?

Very Cool Mantis,clear blood and tissue, very strange...

OMG! Amazing. I'd love to get one of those some day... Keep on taking photos and videos.

They are pretty neat looking mantids. Amazing you can see right through them. Great video demonstrating what food looks like moving through the thorax.

AWESOME pics man. I love it. You can seriously do some studying on their systems with the "glass" one.

FREEZE~!!!

How is this mantis species NOT in EVERY elementary school in America!!! At least the video!

This video, plus Yen's recent anatomy breakdown (and other stuff) need to be moved, copied or linked to our introduction section. This kind of video, plus some of your ooth hatches and molting are VERY educational, fascinating and a big draw for new hobbyists!

OMG, must have this! Are all of them clear or did you get some mutant?

All I can say is OMG!!!!

Harry

Ha,ha, Precarious, the pix are great and the video is brilliant, BUT it caused me physical pain! I have argued here (G_d knows where), based on crude dissections, that the crop (foregut) of mantids is quite short (one of the reasons that they vomit so easily) and the the narrow proventriculum begins just before the distal end of the thorax instead of the abdomen, as is more common in insects, and now I was going to see it proven in living color! Down goes the food, past the first pair of legs, past the second pair -- it's got to stop now, and I'll have a drink to celebrate! Then, POW! the video ends! Please do a fragile old man a favor and keep on filming until the food comes to a stop and starts filling the foregut! Puhleese?

(I had a drink anyway, but it was medicinal rather than celebratory).

angelofdeathzz said:

where the heck are you getting bees this time of year?

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No bee. That's a Hydei. The nymph is only about an inch long. I should have included a pic that shows size reference. Next time.

more_rayne said:

OMG, must have this! Are all of them clear or did you get some mutant?

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I really don't know. I had 3 ooths. I didn't know they would need food smaller than fruit flies. By the time I got springtails they had gone cannibalistic. Once they had a taste for each other they wouldn't eat anything else. They all got eaten or died for some unknown reason. This is the only one remaining. Yeah, one nymph out of 3 ooths. Big fail for me. But, hey, I got this cool footage and stills!

PhilinYuma said:

Please do a fragile old man a favor and keep on filming until the food comes to a stop and starts filling the foregut! Puhleese?

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The rest of the video is on my pay-per-view site. You think everything is free???

But seriously, this was all captured pretty much by accident. I hadn't planned it at all. I didn't realized just how clear it was until I looked very closely as it ate. When I did I grabbed the cameras!

I will do a full-length video of it eating as soon as I get the chance. Do you want to see it pooping too? :lol:

So was all the nymphs clear like this, or just a few? (and for that matter, do they stay clear or do they darken as they age?)

I think they're pretty cool regardless. B)

Liz

"G_d" may want him to have 2 drinks if you can film it pooping !!! :lol:

Sorry Phil I had to say it...

Yes please

From mouth to finish but sped up like your molt vids, totally educational of course, :lol:

Sorry you didn't get more survivors though dude.

I tried some tropical woodlice as another option for tiny food but every mantis I gave one to took a bite, spat it out and dropped the rest. Pretty gutting after waiting months for the culture to take before actually trying to use them as feeders

How are the springtails going down in the mantid mansion?

Precarious! Awesome job again! You always amaze me with your work!

That last pic is great. Nice vid and interesting species.

I would definitely want this species. But they can't take fruit flies at L1. I had trouble feeding springtails to L. minor nymphs and they all died . So I'm cautious about similar sized mantis nymphs. I hope you get another one and can breed them.