# Color problems



## pizzuti (Aug 16, 2007)

I've raised a healthy green _M. religiosa_ for about a month now, and it is a week and a half or two weeks into its adult stage.

Yesterday I caught a male of the same species, which I am thinking is an ideal mate. The probem, though, is that I'm not sure about the color. The male is a brown color, darker than most I have seen here (but still clearly _M. religiosa_.) The female, as I said before, is quite green.

Has anyone had any problems mating mantids of the same species but drastically different colors?

I don't know if I have much choice; mantids seem to vary from green to brown based on the year and this year they are overwhelmingly brown, I've seen 8 or 10 brown ones outside (and let them go) and this is the only green one I have seen. When I was younger, some years were about 50/50, but on other years they were overwhelmingly green; I tended to find more green ones. I don't know if they adapt to the color of their surroundings (we just came out of a 5-year drought) or if it's based on the color of the food they eat, or if it's just genetic variation. However, I have noticed that I have never seen a brown one mate with a green one. The closest I have come is to see one that was in an inbetween range mate with a green.


----------



## Ben.M (Aug 16, 2007)

The colour doesnt matter at all, as long as they are the same species then they can breed  , colour doent come in to it


----------



## pizzuti (Aug 16, 2007)

That's what I was hoping. OK here's another concern; the female is very short for a female, but the male is very long for a male. That means that when they're mating, the male's head will extend so far as to be directly over the female's head, or maybe a little farther back. Is that a risk, since she could easily grab him and start eating him prematurely?


----------



## Ben.M (Aug 16, 2007)

This species is known for the females eating the males so there isnt really anything u could do even if they were the normal size, but if u feed the female up A LOT!!! then she might feel so full up that she dont want the male for dinner


----------



## pizzuti (Aug 16, 2007)

I've mated this species many times and gotten it to work out... even when she does eat the male, he gets to mate for a long time before he's eaten while trying to dismount. I've only had the male be eaten once, when I left the room for a while and came back to find it too late (the head was already gone, and she was holding the thorax while the abdomen dropped. Later, the bottom 1/3 of the male crawled around for a while and started mating with the female again)

I'm just worried that there would be no repreive here, he'd be within her grasp the second it starts. I think I'll just feed her grashoppers before it starts.


----------



## Ben.M (Aug 16, 2007)

Well good luck with the mating then


----------



## Rick (Aug 16, 2007)

What's the problem again? Oh thats right, there is no problem with that.


----------



## pizzuti (Aug 17, 2007)

Well, I tried mating them. I put them both out on an open surface, and fed the female a grasshopper so she wouldn't eat the male if things went wrong.

He crept slowly toward her, and I was surprised to see that he arranged himself parallel to her rather than behind her, and only about an inch away. Then he lunged at the grasshopper she was eating (which was already mostly dead) and started eating it too.

I separated them pretty quickly and put the male away... but this encounter seems really odd to me. I'm not sure what to make of it, except maybe the male had just molted and wasn't sexually able to mate yet.


----------



## Ben.M (Aug 17, 2007)

He was probs just hungry :lol:


----------



## pizzuti (Aug 17, 2007)

It seems that if his sole purpose in life is to mate, he should make that a priority - especially since he had just eaten a day before. But I'll try again in a couple days.


----------



## Ben.M (Aug 17, 2007)

Thats the problem, u hav got feed the male quite a bit before mating as well as the female because for some reason male mantids put food before the next generation :lol:


----------

