# A mantids death?



## Montisa (Nov 6, 2010)

For a couple days now, my beloved female Chinese mantis Willow, has been on her last life reserves. She is pretty much immobile and wont eat or drink. So I was wondering, since mantids are canabilistic, if I could just hand her the mantis as food. Or should I bury her...


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## LauraMG (Nov 6, 2010)

You could feed her to another, or take her outside to be consumed by a bird or something, or if you have any reptiles that could use a meal. If you're more sentimental though, you could mos def bury her. I froze my first to put her out of her misery and ended up just throwing her out with the garbage (it felt a little wrong, but I didn't know what else to do with her either!) so it's really up to you how you feel the most comfortable. I'm so sorry for your loss


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## sporeworld (Nov 6, 2010)

Yeah, I usually just put mine in the freezer when they get to that point, but those all all much better "circle of life" suggestions...


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## MrPitseleh (Nov 7, 2010)

I don't like the idea of wasting things, I actually want to be Eaten by a tiger or something when I'm like 70. I just had my chinese male Charlie die he was to big to feed to my Europeans though so I just burried him instead.  He didn't go through an old dying mantis phase though, I just found him dead on the floor of his Enclosure yesterday and the day before he was just fine.


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## PhilinYuma (Nov 7, 2010)

MrPitseleh said:


> I don't like the idea of wasting things,* I actually want to be Eaten by a tiger or something when I'm like 70*. I just had my chinese male Charlie die he was to big to feed to my Europeans though so I just burried him instead.  He didn't go through an old dying mantis phase though, I just found him dead on the floor of his Enclosure yesterday and the day before he was just fine.


MrP:

Let me assure you, on good authority, that when(_if_) you get to 70, you will find a dozen excellent reasons for postponing your appointment with the tiger. Remember, worms recycle, too.

Select Bibliography:

Seuss, Dr.; _You're Only Old Once_

Seuss, Dr.: _I Can Lick 30 Tigers, Today! and Other Stories_


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## MrPitseleh (Nov 7, 2010)

PhilinYuma said:


> MrP:
> 
> Let me assure you, on good authority, that when(_if_) you get to 70, you will find a dozen excellent reasons for postponing your appointment with the tiger. Remember, worms recycle, too.


 :lol: I don't like worms their gross but tigers are cool and if you're talking about pain as being one of the reasons to not feed myself to a tiger that won't be a problem.  At 70 I'll probably have a heart attack and die as soon it grabs me anyways. So Phil do you you feed your dying guys to other mantids too?


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## PhilinYuma (Nov 7, 2010)

I think that feeding a dying mantis to another is a good idea, especially for mismolts. Usually, though, my mantids just drop dead when they are ready, and I don't give my critters anything they don't have to catch themselves. I never hand feed a crippled mantis.

My husbandry is much more boring that that of most members. I keep my mantids in deli cups or 12" net cubes, feed them with the largest prey they can manage every other day and only move them from their enclosure to clean it. I never take them out to play with me, wander on my computer or watch TV, so they get much less unnecessary exercise and in my opinion, stress. Of course, i have had mismolts and sudden unexplained deaths, but i like to keep them to a minimum, and my mantids have good lifespans despite much more food than they would get outside and temps of around F80-F85.

Sunny tells me that this is another example of my being unempathic, and we agree that that is a Good Thing.


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## sporeworld (Nov 7, 2010)

Awwww. You NEVER get to play with them...? I gotta think wandering around on my desk is less stressful than dodging birds and other yucky buggers. 

Ah, well. To each, his own. I think I'd move on if I didn't get to play with them at least a little...

One note on feeding other mantids: Don't do it if the specimen is sick. I'll leave it to the pros to know the risks, but it doesn't seem worth it.


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## MrPitseleh (Nov 7, 2010)

Sporeworld said:


> Awwww. You NEVER get to play with them...? I gotta think wandering around on my desk is less stressful than dodging birds and other yucky buggers.
> 
> Ah, well. To each, his own. I think I'd move on if I didn't get to play with them at least a little...
> 
> One note on feeding other mantids: Don't do it if the specimen is sick. I'll leave it to the pros to know the risks, but it doesn't seem worth it.


  Good point on the stress from birds, plus when you have 10 of them and you only take 1 out Every however often thats not a whole lot to where I think it would stress them out much and the risk from sick mantids I hadn't thought about that, though I haven't Encountered that problem yet. I think I'd probably give up mantids too if I didn't interact with them. I plan to keep a small number of mantids and name them all.


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## Peter Clausen (Nov 7, 2010)

I freeze them for some of my dried collector friends. Mismolts usually pass their energy on to our pet reptiles.


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## Rick (Nov 7, 2010)

Depending on the mantis it may go to my dried collection, fed to another animal or simply tossed outside to decompose naturally. Most often they are fed to my turtles unless the mantis was sick or something. A mismolted mantis will be fed to another mantis or the turtles.


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## MantidLord (Nov 7, 2010)

A dying mantis of old age is fed to my tarantula. If she's not hungry or the mantis is dead, then another mantis. But if the mantis seems sick, then I just let go outside. I never freeze, just seems like a waste of energy.


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## PhilinYuma (Nov 7, 2010)

Sporeworld said:


> Awwww. You NEVER get to play with them...? I gotta think wandering around on my desk is less stressful than dodging birds and other yucky buggers.
> 
> Ah, well. To each, his own. I think I'd move on if I didn't get to play with them at least a little...
> 
> One note on feeding other mantids: Don't do it if the specimen is sick. I'll leave it to the pros to know the risks, but it doesn't seem worth it.


As you say, to each his own, but have you ever seen a mantis successfully run away from a bird?

Actually, though, the causes of stress in insects are quite different. A good working definition is "the response of an organism to meet all adaptive demands made from the environment." As with homeotherms like us, the reaction to stress is usually mediated by hormones, most famously in our case, adrenalin.

Insects in the wild are constantly exposed to stress and manage to survive and reproduce effectively. The question then becomes one of whether the captive raised mantis is more stressed than its wild cousin and whether that stress causes adverse physiological effects. A comparison between the problems experienced by pet mantises, sudden death, mismolts and cannibalism during copulation, and those by captive raised mantids in research labs, suggests that the latter do much better than the former.

Because of the size of the enclosures, spraying lab mantids once a day does not cause the evaporative effect found in deli cups that drops their temp by at least five degrees in seconds (I have measured this). Instead they live in a humidified environment which more closely imitates natural conditions., Also they are not handled beyond the need to care for them or teased to make a threat display. The success that we do have demonstrates that mantids can survive quite a bit of stress, but some of the ailments that they are heir to, particularly mismolts which greatly exceed those in nature or professional setups, suggest that they could do better with less stress.

I would agree, though, that the sudden appearance of a yucky bugger would be very stressful indeed. I imagine that it would scare the feces right out of the little guy.


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## Ntsees (Nov 7, 2010)

Like some other people, I feed my dead mantids to my other mantids (assuming they weren't sick). If it's the last one, then I just bury it or feed it to my fish.


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## sporeworld (Nov 7, 2010)

Very well written, Phil.

Cocerning the deli cup method, I DO still keep Orchids and other jungle species in variations of these, for humdity reasons (I move them to the big cages when they're adults). It also bears mentioning that I use a ReptiFogger with my screen cages to keep humdity high (usually 70-80%) AND good ventilation (although I'm considering just using a large scale humdifier for the whole office - static is an issue anyway). I think some of the Big Dripper things would work, too. But I still mist a few times a day. I also have (fake) foliage in the enclosures that hold a lot of moisture - as close as I could get and not use real plants. And I spray the litter on the bottom for even more.

Also, just to clarify my personality, I'm a big softy - I LOVE my babies! I don't annoy them or force their threat displays. They really are my version of a zen garden - i think we calm each other down.

BTW, Phil, are you one of the forum guys that are into the science and research of mantids and such...? (You write like a researcher). I'm wondering if there's any kind of documentation of mismolts in the wild and their frequency - particularly on the Idols. Do they have a preference of hang plant that maybe we're not taking into account...? A shape of structure that we're not mimicing properly...? Or are we maybe looking at numbers that DO reflect a naturally occuring phenomena...? I think if my mismolting Idols had fallen into branches (easy to recover from) instead of a flat floor and a horizontal climb to get back up, they may have faired better.

Thoughts...?


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## Krissim Klaw (Nov 8, 2010)

PhilinYuma said:


> The success that we do have demonstrates that mantids can survive quite a bit of stress, but some of the ailments that they are heir to, particularly mismolts which greatly exceed those in nature or professional setups, suggest that they could do better with less stress.


Do they have documented studies on the mismolt ratio in the wild? All I can ever think when it comes to wild mantids is about is those itty bitty nymphs breaking out and having to survive in such a fierce world.As for my own care practices I imagine I am on the opposite extreme in the hobby. My manitids are strictly pets, they all get names, and rather than busy myself with breeding and trying to keep tons I tend to only have 1-3 at a time. I tip my imaginary hat at those who can mange raising up multiple species and huge batches of nymphs. Way too much work for me. I also thoroughly enjoy handling my mantises and letting them roam my room on a daily basis. They don't seem particularly stressed to me, but I'm just as mantis obsessed fool. I have however yet to loose one to a mismolt though so perhaps you chaps aren't handling yours enough?  I'm kidding of course. That, is just the mantis addict in me talking.


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## LauraMG (Nov 8, 2010)

Krissim Klaw said:


> I'm kidding of course. That, is just the mantis addict in me talking.


Good to see you lurking around Krissim


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## PhilinYuma (Nov 8, 2010)

Ha, ha, KK! No, of course they don't have "documented studies" on mantis mismolts in the wild! Who would fund such a project?  I based that statement on the fact that, although badly mismolted mantids would quickly become prey in the wild, there are very few reports (I think that Rick has noted the phenomenon) of slight mishaps, like crumpled wings. Also, the fact that you and I are experiencing few if any mismolts suggests that this is what we could expect in nature.

If all folks who make pets of or play with their mantids were to be banned from the forum we would have virtually no one left, so I am certainly not condemning the practice, but I came to the hobby from several decades of keeping tropical fish, and almost no one takes them out to play with.

Sporeworld: No I'm not a researcher. My BS in biology is so old that our equivalent of the freshman insect collection was a collection of the smaller dinosaurs. The entomological literature tends to have little on mantids, asisde from systematics, since they are not pests and not economically rewarding, like bees and silkworm moths. Somewhere, though, I have two issues of Orin's Invertebrate Magazine with an article on Idolomantis by Christian, a forum member and entomologist, so I'll try to find them.gazine


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## JoeCapricorn (Nov 8, 2010)

There is a spot where I lay all my bugs to rest. It's where I put Emerald after she died and where I put most of my dead insects since. I don't bury them unless I really wish to, so I just lay them in the vegetation since the rest will be taken care of by the earth.


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## Krissim Klaw (Nov 8, 2010)

@ Laura- Yep, I'm still lurking around with my mantises. XD

@Phil- Its hard to say. Nature can be so unpredictable. On one hand you would expect they would have evolved well to fit their natural environments, but on the other hand the environment is always changing. It seems like it would be hard to gauge how often mismolts occur because I doubt such a mantis would last long before something gobbles it up. And what do you mean you don't play with your fish? I love playing with fish, probably why I am so drawn to Bettas. Sure you don't want to take them out but they always seem to enjoy company and are a curious bunch.

I do feel some mantis species tend to be better suited for handling than others. I've always been drawn to the species that are highly active and tend to roam a lot versus the species that prefer to remain hidden away behind their twigs and often won't be tempted down from their perch even for some tasty food. Its hard for me to say they look stressed when they are perched on their tip toes trying to reach out to my hand or face. Of course then again I probably stress them out with my teasing as I will remain just out of reach inching ever back while they keep trying to creep forward. :tt2: 

I guess you could say I've always been a very hands on type of gal. It is one of the reasons I've been struggling to resist getting a tarantula. I think I would be way too hands on for them.


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## sporeworld (Nov 8, 2010)

Ha, ha! I can totally see someone just staring at their flopping fish on a desk, saying "Jump! Jump!".


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## GreenOasis (Nov 9, 2010)

If you have a sentimental attachment to your beloved Chinese...you could mount her! (In a display, you pervs!)  It's pretty easy to do, not very expensive, and you'll have her to look at for a looooooong time!

(I plan to be mummified so that my children can put ME in a corner! ...talk about irony, eh?) :lol: 

-Carey Kurtz-


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## dgerndt (Nov 11, 2010)

GreenOasis said:


> If you have a sentimental attachment to your beloved Chinese...you could mount her! (In a display, you pervs!)  It's pretty easy to do, not very expensive, and you'll have her to look at for a looooooong time!


How do you perserve a dead mantis? My poor Chinese, Manny, is getting old. ): I'm not sure what I want to do when she goes. I don't want to feed her to anything! She's my little sweetie.


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## mantisboy (Nov 12, 2010)

I just put the last of my fertile female Euros in the freezer this morning. I thought she was going to die weeks ago and much to my surprise she lingered on. I thought for sure that she was going to die on Monday morning. I even took her upstairs and placed on her on a towel to feel the warmth of the morning sun. To my surprise she laid an Ooth right on the towel....what a champ! But this morning she could no longer hold onto to any branches in her housing and kept falling onto her back. I took her out of her housing, held her for awhile, then placed her into a jar which I placed in the freezer. I can't say that I was emotionally moved by event, her life cycle was over...it was time.

My kids want to bury her in the garden next to one of our other passed mantids tomorrow after school. I think that's kinda of cute and endearing.

I'm now down to 1 last female who is infertile, a late bloomer I had no males to mate with her. I have now purchased crickets for the first time as temps have hit 30's. I make them a a mix of crushed Wheaties and Iams along with a chunk of banana. I now have 11 Ooths so spring ought to be pretty interesting.


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## MrPitseleh (Nov 12, 2010)

So why is it people are always putting mantids in the freezer just before they die? :huh: I would picture it being a worse death by quite a bit than to just passing away as an old mantis.


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## PhilinYuma (Nov 12, 2010)

He was a nymph raised in the Old Rite and so we gave him a requiem mass:

_Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine_: _et_ _lux perpetua luceat eis_.

_Rquiasat in pace_

_Ite missa est _

Good night sweet nymph, and flights of mantids sing thee to thy rest

And then we heard a mighty rushing sound. Was it the beating of the mighty wings of the Great Mantis Goddess (BbHN), coming for to carry him home?

No. Just the toilet being flushed.


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## sporeworld (Nov 12, 2010)

Ha!

I put them in the freezer, becuase the slow death takes days, sometimes weeks. And in the wild, I have to think he'd have come to a violent end much sooner. I can see from other posts that once I get a little less sentimental, I'll just regularly cut and feed them to others - circle of life stuff. I'm not quiiiiite there just yet...

Mark


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## mantisboy (Nov 12, 2010)

This time of year I freeze them for that exact reason Sporeworld, death can take days. So looking at a mantid...lying on it's back for days isn't exactly what I consider to be enjoyable. Now earlier in the year I just tossed them in the garden right before they were going to become fully immobile and die, allowing the birds to eat them. Not to mention my kids have become attached to some of the mantids so telling them, "I cut up, smashed, tossed out, flushed, fed to, or threw out" one of their pets isn't exactly going to earn me any good parenting points.


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## sporeworld (Nov 12, 2010)

Nice.

Yeah, my staff have some level of attachment (dismal though it may be) and get wierded out that I freeze them. But when I mention tossing them out for the birds, they agree it's better. I know I'd prefer it (especially if I were an endotherm).


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## Pet Duck Boy (Nov 12, 2010)

It usually goes out to the chickens. But hanging up an adult ghost mantis (After one of my 4 expire) would be pretty cool, since their so nice to look at. Just not sure how to do that.


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## lion (Nov 29, 2010)

Can I spraypaint mine so he looks like a statue?


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## dgerndt (Nov 29, 2010)

lion said:


> Can I spraypaint mine so he looks like a statue?


After your mantis dies, I guess you could.


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