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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.

Well everything they know is programmed in them at birth; I doubt insects really "learn" much, aside from some very basic conditioning.

Recently, I noticed a new thing about how mantids hunt. If I put prey in the mantid's cage and leave the cage alone against a plain white wall, the mantid well very slowly move for the prey. It could take 20 minutes for the mantid to move 6 inches. But if I wave my hands around the cage...

The "poison" is an enzyme and is broken down in the stomach of the mantid. The ability to eat bee venom is not unique to mantids. You could eat bees and not be affected, assuming you are not allergic to bees, because your stomach acids would break the enzymes down. Think about this; spiders...

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...

I once caught a 1 1/2 inch European (L4? L5?) and it molted about 3 days later. 4 days after that, it molted again. It molted one more time a week later. I was averaging about 5 days per molt. After that, it was a subadult, and even as a subadult it was bigger than most adults are. I left...

Is it normal for them to share like that? I've never seen that happening; they'd just as soon eat each other as the cricket.

They would run away. Nymphs are very mobile. You might get them to stay for a while, but I doubt even a whole hour.

You may have a while before you have nymphs... they lay eggs in the fall and the nymphs hatch in the spring, around May-ish. If you've done this before and know that you can bypass the incubation period by keeping them warm, go for it. But I've been told they need a simulated winter, which...

How tall do they need to moult? Probably just a few inches, a little more than the length of the body should be plenty. Width gives them room to move around a bit.

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...

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...

When I was a kid I thought one of my ooths was being invaded by ants. They turned out to be baby mantids. They should be able to naturally defend themselves from ants outside, because in the wild they live among ands and continue to survive as a species. But if you're really worried, you...

Late summer, about nowish, is best for places with cold winters; they die in the winter and hatch in the spring, so it takes until this time of year for them to become large adults which are easily seen.

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...

It probably depends most on what species of mantid you have and what region it is native to. Look up your species and look up the climate of where it is from. As an example: in Colorado, all we have is M. Religiosa, and they live perfectly fine in the wild. Winters here are extremely dry...

crushed dead leaves, grass clippings or little bits of wood hold moisture pretty well if you're having a hard time finding non-treated stuff at pet stores. Or you could just use plain sand or gravel, but put a live spider plant in as a humidifier.

Give them a few days to see if they recover.

Maybe she was damaged internally in a fall. I can't say for sure, but maybe that's more likely to happen when they're full of eggs ready to be laid, so the inside of the body is stressed. Other than that, this happens all the time with old age. I'd say its old age for sure if it's been an...

Is it safe to refrigerate mantids? I've seen it done with other insects to keep them alive longer without food, and when you warm them back up they're fine. But I've never tried it with mantids.