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Damon do not give live birth. Eggs are held in a silken pouch that is attached to the underside of their opisthosoma and would not be produced singly and covered in silk individually. There's probably a small spider hiding inside your cork bark. I personally have issues with Steatoda infesting...

Ah, from what your original post said, it seemed like you obtained a mantis and was told it was "pregnant." You had not mentioned housing it with a male. I've been able to candle Phyllocrania oothecae and see whether or not eggs are developing by looking for the developing eyes. You cannot...

Mantises do not get pregnant as that implies having a developing embryo or fetus inside their body. The proper term for a  mantis that is full of eggs is gravid. Being gravid does not mean they have fertile eggs since fertile mantis eggs do not exist until they are on their way out of the body...

Got my mantises quickly and they were well-packaged and healthy. It was a pleasure doing business with him.

Unfortunately, not all insects advertise their distastefulness or poisonous content because there is always something capable of feeding on them without any side effects. Those prey items tend to double up by having cryptic colorations and patterns to try to hide as a first defense. Jurassic...

Many sawfly species have larvae that are very colorful to warn predators that they are either distasteful or poisonous to eat. They'll often strike a pose with their little butts hanging off into the air to look more intimidating when threatened.

That's a female, you can see the cleft in the subgenital plate.

Remember that some froglets can eat things nearly as big as they are. Anything thinner than the width of their mouth can also be munched on, even if it is a bit longer than them--they'll just cram it into their mouths and down their stomach as best they can. If you plan on feeding vertebrates...

Decreased temperatures can influence the effectiveness of their limited immune response and make them more susceptible to infection. Low ventilation is a possible culprit. With low ventilation, atmospheric spore loads can build up within an enclosure and overwhelm their immune response. The...

My female successfully molted into an adult today. She's had swollen wing buds for a couple weeks and was hanging upside-down with her arms loosely in front of her last night, so I knew she was going to molt soon. Here's a picture of a male that molted into an adult early last September...

If they are indeed L2, sexing by the abdomen is not yet reliable. If they are L3, you can check if they are female by checking for the presence of a cleft in the subgenital plate, or the last large segment on the underside of the abdomen. They do not differ in behavior by *** until they are...

Yes, but worms are a source of soil-dwelling pathogens and often carry parasite eggs. Feeding an organism something that it would not normally encounter is not recommended. It's a good way to expose a species to something they have not evolved to handle.

Both will leave residue, so you will need to rinse after dissolving the mineral deposits. If you do not rinse, not only do you leave residues such as sticky lemon juice or salt from vinegar's reaction to some of the minerals, you also leave behind dissolved minerals to reform as deposits.

A razor or scraper would be fine for a glass tank, but it would not work with acrylic and plastic--you'll just make the enclosure even more difficult to see into with all the scratches. Both lemons and vinegar are acidic and help dissolve mineral deposits so that they can be easily wiped away...

I cut up lemons in halves and use them to scrub down sides of tanks if they have mineral deposits. The acid dissolves the minerals and the lemon itself is soft and does not scrape and scratch the surface. One thing to keep in mind is that if you're cleaning a plastic or acrylic enclosure, you...

You can use a heat lamp to warm your mantises, but just like with reptiles, you need to make sure it's far enough away that it doesn't create spots that are so hot that they might burn. You also need to make sure it only heats part of the enclosure to allow for a gradient of heat.

That is indeed a female--you can see the cleft in the subgenital plate that is only present with females. Collar color changes over time and is not a good indicator of ***. I've had female orchids keep a brown collar until they were subadult females. The cleft is clearly visible at L3 and if...

I've noticed that many people tend to throw around the terms egg bound and egg binding when talking about female mantises that refuse to lay their oothecae. Egg binding is a term used for things like reptiles and birds where they do not have enough calcium or other minerals in their diet and...

It is unlikely that the entire ootheca is parasitized, so at least a few nymphs should hatch out from it if it is fertile.

When mantises are fed as much as the can eat and are kept at optimal temperatures, they will develop as fast as they can and molt as often as they can. In the wild and in captivity, fluctuating temperatures and variable prey frequency can limit their development. If you're keeping them at a...