Accidently crushed my mantid's leg, amputation?

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blitzmantis

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My mantis has been acting weird for the last couple of days. For about 4 days, it has not eaten, it's abdomen doesn't shrink and it will attempt to grab the food but sort of hits it. Anyway, this got really annoying so after I had once again tried feeding it, the mantis had it's left back leg on the edge of the lid and when I closed the lid, the 'foot' was crushed. It does not put the foot on the roof, it sort of hovers over the roof. It happened about 1:00pm today (UK). Should I amputate the limb? If so, how would I do it? Please help.

 
As above, but remove any food that might be in there and dont try to handle it or move the cage about until its done and hardened off, other wise you could kill it!!

Dont worry about the foot, accidents happen, never amputate any thing unless you are a surgeon, the mantis is probably better equiped to know if it needs removing and will do so itself.

As its only a foot she will just start to re-grow it, but not until the shed after this one as it is too close by the sounds of it :)

 
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Oh no, not another snipping off legs topic :blink: ;)

Just leave it to do what it wants with the leg, just as Birdfly said.

 
I have done this before. Usually I just let it be.

 
Birdfly said:
As above, but remove any food that might be in there and dont try to handle it or move the cage about until its done and hardened off, other wise you could kill it!!Dont worry about the foot, accidents happen, never amputate any thing unless you are a surgeon, the mantis is probably better equiped to know if it needs removing and will do so itself.

As its only a foot she will just start to re-grow it, but not until the shed after this one as it is too close by the sounds of it :)
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One question: Before the mantis molt, must you remove all feeders from the cage? What happen if you do have one or two fruit flies around, especially if we are dealing with L2 & L3 nymphs?

 
I wouldnt worry about a few fruit fly buzzing around, if it were crickets or large flies there is the danger that a fresh moulted or moulting mantis could be knocked to the floor and crippled or even killed an eaten by crickets :)

 
Birdfly said:
I wouldnt worry about a few fruit fly buzzing around, if it were crickets or large flies there is the danger that a fresh moulted or moulting mantis could be knocked to the floor and crippled or even killed an eaten by crickets :)
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A follow up question: Would the presence of feeders take away the attention or delay the would be scheduled molting process? Since I load new fruit flies into the habitat either on daily basis or every other day, there are feeders present constantly.

Thanks,

Alan

 
Alan Chien said:
A follow up question: Would the presence of feeders take away the attention or delay the would be scheduled molting process? Since I load new fruit flies into the habitat either on daily basis or every other day, there are feeders present constantly.Thanks,

Alan
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Hi, I would say no, the presants of feeders would not delay the mantids moult, if you have lots of small nymphs you can absorb the damage that can happen in heavily loaded vivs/housing, which is probably not nearly as much as the numbers lost from cannablism?

Later, as the mantid nymphs get older and are feeding on heavier flies and crickets (thats if you use crickets, i know some people do) the danger from knockdown-mismoults is greater as you will have less of this "hatch" of mantids and each individual will be more precious to you.

In summary its not a good idea to leave feeders in with a mantis of say 3rd instar up at moult time imo :)

 
But...I lost a bunch of I. oratoria nymphs due to tape (don't ask why I used tape), and some of them were simple, like getting one leg stuck to the tape. They would just sit there and do nothing. one of them, I actually pulled his leg off :blink: and he died instantly. Another, I just wet my fingers, and kind of rubbed his leg (the part stuck) until he part came off. He's still aive (he's actually my only L4), and his leg is slowly returning. I wonder why the other nymphs didn't chew their legs off. of course, most of the mantids had vitals stuck to the tape: heads, abdomens, forearms, etc. But I removed all the tape, and so far only two unexplanable L1 deaths.

 

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