cage setups

[Saebjorn9]

So I had a beautifully colored green female chinese mantis for a while that I released as a nymph and caught outside when a couple molts older. Yet once I put her in the cage, after 2 molts her color turned to a mottled brown. Now while it really doesn't matter their color, I still find the green mantises to be beautiful. My tank setup was a generic large size critter carrier with the ventilated top. Green lid, clear plastic, with a few branches that move diagonal across the tank. There were live plants in the soil which was coveres with a layer of mulch-like topsoil. The tank was plenty green yet I guess because the soil was so dominant in color she took to it's color. What kind of cage setups do you guys reccommend that help preserve the green colors of a mantis?

I've read that people use papertowels and leave the container pretty empty. Is that a good choice to help keep the color green? For all I know there isn't even a way to control the color change. I've also considered using sand, any thoughts on that?

 

[tylersterrain]

The color of a mantis will vary from molt to molt, but, the environment has no affect on the color of a mantis. Don't be alarmed, my Egyptian Mantis recently went through the same thing, only he went from a beautiful pale green to a light yellow-brown.

 

[rs4guy]

Some think enviroment color does in fact affect the animals color. But there has been no real evidence of this...

 

[Saebjorn9]

Ah ok, ty rs4guy, but doesn't it make sense that a mantis will eventually take to the color of it's environment to camoflauge itself better? Thanks for the answers guys, I since cleaned out my tank and put in some papertowels as a trial run to see how it goes. It'll definitely be cool to see the spoils of my mantises feasts litter the floor of her cage haha.

 

[frogparty]

If you sit on a blue couch will you eventually turn blue?

 

[Saebjorn9]

If you sit on a blue couch will you eventually turn blue?

Chameleons WILL turn blue. But it would make sense for an animal to slowly change to the color of its surroundings as long as they fall within the color scheme naturally found in the wild. You could argue orchid mantises sat on orchids too long and eventually started looking like them (over the course of thousands if not millions of years of evolution)

 

[Norlin]

true over millions of years perhaps, but not by changing the substrate in your housing over the course of a couple weeks I think is what he was getting at