# Dad & Lad



## jday (Jun 3, 2010)

Hello. Me and my dad really love praying mantises. I'm seven and my dad's 43. (Dad's typing here.) I started three years ago. The first year sometime in either late summer or early fall me and my dad caught a male praying mantis and raised it for five weeks. It was brown with a little bit of green. The next year I hatched two egg sacks. As soon as me and my dad noticed them we let them go. This year we are raising praying mantises to adulthood. All of them but one have shedded twice. The one that has not shedded twice has shedded for the third time.

Mantises are supposed to shed two weeks apart but we fed them so much that this certain one shedded one week apart. I use a big butterfly net to catch leaf hoppers and flies and grasshoppers and crickets and beetles and moths. The way we give them water is put water in a sponge and put it in their cage. It's fun to watch them drink because they duck their heads to the sponge to drink, and it's fun to watch them strike because you always see them do a small wiggle dance. When they strike it is a split second to capture prey!

This year I found four egg cases. One of them hatched in the wild, but two hatched in captivity. One did not hatch because it had hatched a year ago. One of the egg cases that hatched hatched bunches of babies, but the other one that hatched only hatched like eight. We had about four hundred and now only like twenty five. We released the rest except for the ones that did die either dying 'cause usually in groups often for kittens if there's a lot usually one or two will die. Probably that happens to all egg cases for mantises. Some of them also died while trying to shed, and hatching from the egg case.

Next year I would like to try raising ghost mantises. I really do think that they look very cool even though they might not look like dead leaves they look like shriveled up dead leaves or shriveled up green leaves.


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## lancaster1313 (Jun 3, 2010)

Welcome. I haven't been a member long, but this forum has been very helpful to me.


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## ismart (Jun 3, 2010)

Welcome to the forum!  you will find this forum to be very helpful!  What species do you guys have?


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## jday (Jun 3, 2010)

ismart said:


> Welcome to the forum!  you will find this forum to be very helpful!  What species do you guys have?


We have Chinese mantises. We found a Carolina mantis once, but no egg cases.


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## hibiscusmile (Jun 3, 2010)

Hello Zenola and Dad, glad to see u have been bitten by the mantis bug! haha, glad to see u here!


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## Mr.Mantid (Jun 3, 2010)

ello guv'na!


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## Opivy (Jun 4, 2010)

welcome! I was around your age, or well - a little bit older when I first became interested in mantids as well

not sure what did it. I really liked the character "Zorak" on space ghost coast to coast, and my dad found me an adult. was very excited.

Ghosts are very cool!


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## Rick (Jun 4, 2010)

Welcome


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## revmdn (Jun 4, 2010)

Welcome Dad and Lad. My daughter who'll turn 7 this summer is a big mantid fan as well.


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