# Heirodula actual size.



## Orin (Mar 7, 2007)

If you've seen a wild-caught female Chinese mantis next to a larger species of Hierodula you notice the Heirodula doesn't look that big (a little shorter and bulkier). However, Chinese come out pretty small in captivity even if fed a variety of food (even tinier if fed just crickets). It would be interesting to see a wild caught Hierodula membranacea or H. grandis.


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## Rick (Mar 7, 2007)

Here is a comparison I did:


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## Orin (Mar 7, 2007)

The Chinese is wild-caught but the Hierodula captive-reared correct?


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## xenuwantsyou (Mar 7, 2007)

Correct me if I'm wrong but that's a female Hierodula and a male Chinese right? How about two females or two males?


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## yen_saw (Mar 7, 2007)

xenu i believed they are both female.

Wild caught species is generally larger than captive bred. Over here, captive bred stick mantis (B. Borealis) and stagmomantis sp. always appear smaller than any of the wild caught species. I have never seen any captive bred chinese mantis longer than 5 inches.


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## xenuwantsyou (Mar 7, 2007)

Doh, silly me. I should have looked at the thorax.


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## Rick (Mar 7, 2007)

They are both female. The chinese was wild caught.


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## robo mantis (Mar 7, 2007)

Is that a cat on the bottom of the first pic?


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## Rick (Mar 7, 2007)

> Is that a cat on the bottom of the first pic?


yeah lol good eyes. She will gladly eat them too.


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## robo mantis (Mar 8, 2007)

so was she trying to kill them? i got to cats myself and they get into a lot of trouble lol


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## Rick (Mar 8, 2007)

> so was she trying to kill them? i got to cats myself and they get into a lot of trouble lol


No she wasn't trying to kill them but would pounce of them if they happened to jump onto the floor.


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## Orin (Mar 8, 2007)

> They are both female. The chinese was wild caught.


If you had reared that Chinese it would have been half that big. Imagine the size a wild Heirodula might be.


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## Rick (Mar 8, 2007)

> > They are both female. The chinese was wild caught.
> 
> 
> If you had reared that Chinese it would have been half that big. Imagine the size a wild Heirodula might be.


I've noticed a slight difference in size but not that much in wild caught vs captive raised. But the wild ones always look better no matter what. I would like to see a wild Heirodula myself too.


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## robo mantis (Mar 8, 2007)

oh my cats would attack them anywhere lol


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## padkison (Mar 8, 2007)

We reared a male chinese last summer from about L3 and it achieved what memory tells me is full size. I don't have access to the picture since my computer is in the shop, but will post later. We also raised a female from a wild caught nymph and she was comparable to the wild caught adult, but I don't recall the size of the nymph we caught.

The mantids were fed roaches which were fed dogfood.


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## Orin (Mar 9, 2007)

Wild-caught doesn't necessarily mean larger size but Chinese are one that C.B. are notoriously smaller. (Padkison - what did you feed the first instar hatchlings to prevent stunting from drosophila?) Color can also be very different on wild-caught. Half the wild P.agrionina are 90% neon green while C.B. never look anything like that. I would think Hierodula get stunted in captivity but it's certainly not the easiest theory to test.


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## AFK (Mar 11, 2007)

how do you guys account for the size discrepance between captive bred and wild caught? wild mantises have better diets and/or mantis size is limited by the size of its environment/enclosure like fish?


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## padkison (Mar 11, 2007)

If drosophilia fed to new hatchlings is cause for stunting, that would explain the size of our captive raised Chinese. They were caught at about 1" and were fed small roaches. They never ate fruit flies.

Never knew that P. agrionina were mostly green in the wild. Mine are always mottled brown. Any pictures of wild P. agrionina?



> Wild-caught doesn't necessarily mean larger size but Chinese are one that C.B. are notoriously smaller. (Padkison - what did you feed the first instar hatchlings to prevent stunting from drosophila?) Color can also be very different on wild-caught. Half the wild P.agrionina are 90% neon green while C.B. never look anything like that. I would think Hierodula get stunted in captivity but it's certainly not the easiest theory to test.


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## francisco (Mar 11, 2007)

Hello All

Perry, I used to get lots and lots of P agrionina and other WC from Africa, and like Orin says, they were Green and Brown.

Unfortunately, they banned the importation of MAntids,so no more.

here is a link to one of them.

regards

FT

http://www.insektenzucht.de/fotos/P_agrionina4.jpg


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## Orin (Mar 12, 2007)

> They were caught at about 1" ...


I was wondering, raising them to full size from hatchlings is not an easy feat. The green coloration of the P.agrionina was even brighter in real life than the picture (thanks for finding a pic online Fransisco). Every individual hatched from oothecae from the green females still ended up all brown in captivity.


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## Christian (Mar 13, 2007)

Hi.

The color is environmentally determined. Lower humidity and a general "brownish" appearance of their enclosure causes most _Parasphendale_ to get brown in captivity. When kept in living plants in a greenhouse etc. some of them well become greenish.

Regarding the size, most mantids can indeed get larger in captivity due to a better food supply. I compared many WCs with their self-bred progeny and sometimes noticed that mines were larger. Usually you get a variety of sizes around a statistical mean. Why your _T. aridifolia_ are smaller than the WCs is an interesting point. I saw similar size differences in _M. religiosa_ and they can partially be explained by suboptimal parameters: both species are strictly saisonal due to the winter, and if they hatch too late or grow too slow they can "decide" to skip a molt to become adult in time. Those specimens are smaller than ones with a regular number of molts. They may be also other reasons for the size differences, though.

Regards,

Christian


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## Orin (Mar 13, 2007)

Nobody has reared a green Parasphendale in captivity, it's not that simple.

How many T. aridifolia have you reared and compared to wild caught?

What's your reference for skipped molts? That sounds like a make believe story.



> Hi.The color is environmentally determined. Lower humidity and a general "brownish" appearance of their enclosure causes most _Parasphendale_ to get brown in captivity. When kept in living plants in a greenhouse etc. some of them well become greenish.
> 
> Regarding the size, most mantids can indeed get larger in captivity due to a better food supply. I compared many WCs with their self-bred progeny and sometimes noticed that mines were larger. Usually you get a variety of sizes around a statistical mean. Why your _T. aridifolia_ are smaller than the WCs is an interesting point. I saw similar size differences in _M. religiosa_ and they can partially be explained by suboptimal parameters: both species are strictly saisonal due to the winter, and if they hatch too late or grow too slow they can "decide" to skip a molt to become adult in time. Those specimens are smaller than ones with a regular number of molts. They may be also other reasons for the size differences, though.
> 
> ...


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## Christian (Mar 13, 2007)

Hi.



> Nobody has reared a green Parasphendale in captivity


Now, I do not breed _Parasphendale_ any more, but I saw a green one at a friend of mine. I don't know if it was wild caught or not.

I have no reference for skipped molts.

Christian


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