didn't know this could happen. wow i suck at this.

[xxdreamchas3r913]

today, i decided to try mating my last female with an older male that had already mated previously. i reasoned that since he was older than my other male and had mated already, he probably knew what he was doing in case the female wasn't too mature and got impatient and agressive or something. he was acting really weird tho, he was really jumpy and scared of everything. when i put the female close by and she started moving, he looked at her like he was interested but wouldn't follow her or start moving towards her. he was swaying and leaning forward and would move his forlegs like he was about to start approaching her but he just twitched his arm a bit and then groom it, and stare at her again. when the female was getting too far i moved her back. after a few more times, he started moving. after he jumped on her, she attacked. i put a stick in the way so she grabbed that instead. the male was incredibly rough and her wings were sticking up everywhere from his hold. she tried attacking him again and then started dragging him around like she was running away. she obviously wasn't ready yet but before i separated them the male just slid off while she was running. as if he didn't want her to run, he immediately clamped down on her abdomen with his claws. of course she attacked again as i jumped in but i couldn't get the male to let go. i've never heard of a male doing this, yea they are rough at times and can even eat the females occasionally but he wasn't biting, it was as if he was catching prey his claws just shot out and gripped her abdomen but he didn't do anything else, he didn't bite her or even jump back on her, he just kept his grip. but his claws were gripping her so hard, i was sure he punctured her, it looked like if someone took tweezers and pinched her abdomen all the way. i squeezed his thorax but he would let go he wouldn't react to the stick i used to try to push him away it was the scariest thing i've seen. it took a couple minutes and he finally let go with the female racing away. i was shocked and decided to let him go. i had one male left so i decided to wait another week or so.

i put the female in the tank i use for mating so she could recuperate from the shock. she was moving different and slow so i hoped all the sticks and little leafy "branches" and large enclosure would calm her down. i let her climb onto a stick and left her alone but checked a bit later and saw that she was in the same spot. a couple hours ago i checked on her again and she was hanging onto a leaf by her claws with her other legs slightly hanging but not gripping anything. i'm pretty sure she was probably hurt internally somehow or the shock was too much. i don't know what to do i'm sure she'll be dead by morning but she still has the strength to hold on to the leaf and i don't know if i should just put her down or see if she'll make it somehow.

i feel confused and frustrated and for the first time in my life, i'm considering if i should just quit this hobby. i've messed up countless times and i know everything that's come up could have been prevented. i've always noticed how selfish and inconsiderate i can be and that most of my mantids deaths were due to my thoughtless actions or lack of action. i might try keeping them again one day when i know i'm able enough to raise them responsibly. i guess i just really suck at this. i must have done something wrong this time too and i know i should have separated them quicker or as soon as the female was showing signs that she wasn't ready. but do any of you know if theres something i can do for her now or if i should just put her in the freezer? and what could have made the male act that way? could age make them more aggressive or just go crazy? he's probably a couple months old by now but i thought males could always mate until they died. and do any of you know about when female limbatas normally start to die off in SoCal? it's only october so i'm sure they'll be fine now but i've never known around when they start to die in the wild since seasons in cali aren't too different. i've kept female limbatas till january in the past but they must die way earlier in the wild. it should be fine if i release my females now right? they aren't too young but they haven't laid ooths yet, a couple aren't too fat either after a couple large crickets. i don't know when they'll be ready to lay i just don't want them to die in the wild before they do. anyways if you read this, thank you all so much and any advice would be great. take care you guys.

 

[Litleape]

I wouldn't put her in the freezer just yet. See how she is tomorrow or over the next couple of days. I had a limbata female that died only after 2 months of adulthood and one ooth. Then I found 3 more outside still alive and thriving (I am in New Mexico). I would say that if you really didn't want the preggo mantids you have maybe see if anyone else wants them. I am no expert so I can't say how they would adapt being set loose outside. It might depend on how long you have had them in captivity. Just my 2 cents. Maybe more experienced keepers can give you some better advice. Good luck.

 

[lunarstorm]

I'm sorry to hear of this stressful incident, I think I would have been upset if that happened to me. I don't expect to offer words that will ease your grief and frustration (the passing of time is usually king at that), but here are my thoughts:

You did the best you could, try to avoid beating yourself up over it. You're dealing with unpredictable animals; anything can happen when you facilitate an encounter.

And regarding the rest of your mantids... Well, we do what we can to give our pets a nice home. The point at which we anesthetize 'em or let 'em fight for life - in our care or in the wild - is often a tough decision. In SoCal, I am guessing you could release adults soon and they will still have a very reasonable chance to mate before they finish their lives out in the wild. But if you really want your mantids to have the best chance of living and laying their ooths, I think they'll have the best chance at that as a pet. The wild is a scary place for a mantis, I doubt most even reach adulthood, much less successfully procreate.

 

[Rick]

Don't stop because of this! What you described is pretty common. Males get crazy sometimes and females sometimes run away. I use my hands instead of a stick as I have much more control that way. This is not reason to be stressed out or thinking of leaving the hobby. You're going to lose mantids, it's going to happen sometimes. Granted, the female dying from a tiny puncture wound is uncommon but sometimes that does happen.

 

[Domanating]

It took me years to know how to raise praying mantis. I've lost countless mantids in my 14/13 years experience. Inappropriate enclosures were one of the main reasons. Other reasons were knowing the hard way that mantids didn't like other mantids in the same enclosure and ant attacks. Many other stupid things i've done or happened contributed to the loss of many many mantids. Even so i have more than a decade experience on the praying-mantis, i only tried to mate them 4 years ago and i still have issues with the babies. All this to say that it takes a lot of time to learn how to keep a praying-mantis from the ooth to its last day.

In a few years you will look back to these days and say " what an idiot i was!" I know it happened to me

Even with my experience, i had and still have unpredictable deaths, man made or not and i know i will have more in the future. You just need to live with it.

 

[angelofdeathzz]

You did nothing wrong, there's no magic wand for getting it all right and perfect. Just live and learn as we all do. You tried to help and thats all you can do sometimes.

 

[MantidLord]

Look on the bright side, at least your male didn't eat your female. That, can be extremely discouraging. One of the joys/pains of the hobby is the unpredictable nature of mantids, even within species. Just wait a while and if this mating doesn't work out, try it again later. Best of luck and I'm sorry to hear about this incident.

 

[meaganelise9]

It's easy to get down on yourself when you're dealing with little lives. You had no way of knowing that would happen. Unfortunately, keeping these bugs is a trial and error learning experience. I can see where it would be upsetting to see.

 

[lancaster1313]

Don't stop because of this! What you described is pretty common. Males get crazy sometimes and females sometimes run away. I use my hands instead of a stick as I have much more control that way. This is not reason to be stressed out or thinking of leaving the hobby. You're going to lose mantids, it's going to happen sometimes. Granted, the female dying from a tiny puncture wound is uncommon but sometimes that does happen.

I have had a couple of rough males that damaged my females, even when the female is ready and doesn't try to run or fight. There is no way of knowing what a male will do once he is introduced, sometimes they are just terribly rough and awkward. It is not your fault, and don't quit because of it.

As for the female, I try to wait until I see them "calling" pointing their abdomens in an obvious way. I don't think that it is a guarantee that they will not run or fight, but the chances may be better.

I am not sure if all species do the "calling", but the ones that I have had, did it when they were ready. My H. multispinas seem to never stop calling, even if they have just been mated. :mellow:

 

[agent A]

I've done worse,

I've had males fly straight into heatlamps, neighbor's lawnmowers, I've had males and females attack each other and they died of infections days later, I've accidentally eggbound females, and I've accidentally killed off whole hatches worth of ooths

we all have bad experiences, it took me 3 years to be a decent rearer, there are still things i need to work on

don't let mistakes discourage you, we only get better by messing up

you live and you learn, good luck with your mantises

 

[xxdreamchas3r913]

wow, i’m really really sorry i just finished this and it ended up being incredibly incredibly long. so please don’t read this until you check how long this really is and decide that it’s not going to take too much of your time. cuz i don’t think i’ve seen any post on this forum half as long as this..and if theres a rule against posts being too long please feel free to delete this right away and sorry.

thank you so much guys i was honestly surprised by all the encouragement but i'm really truly grateful. i was sure there would be at least some criticism from the more experienced ppl here. so really, thank you guys for being so awesome and for all the encouraging words. i’m sorry for responding so late, i’ve been out most of the day had an appointment and some volunteering and stuff. but i already released my remaining females and the male. i know alot of mistakes are normal for beginners but i know i could have done much much better than this. i've never managed to raise more than two mantids at once so i know i was pushing it when i took on more than that. but even so i didn't expect it to turn out nearly this badly i'm just really disappointed in myself cuz even a beginner shouldn't have ended up with 80% of their captive mantids dead. i've had two adult females die this year without figuring out what killed them tho i later realized that the last one might have actually died of starvation. i've never heard of any mantid starving to death unless the owner had absolutely no clue about basic mantid care. this is just totally messed up i'm definitely inexperienced but it doesn't exactly take a pro in this hobby to figure out when they should feed their pets. i woke up this morning and checked on my last 3 females and one of them had dark blotches of liquid on the bottom of her cage and a tiny bit of ooth looking foam on the tip of her abdomen. her abdomen was hanging and her legs were kind of stretched out like they can barely hold on to the lid. the female from the mating incident is pretty much dead now i put her this morning in the freezer she had just enough life in her to move her legs a bit occasionally. i moved the sick looking female into the tank and put in a couple of flies just in case she could still eat but she was getting weaker. she was dead by the time i got home. as if i wasn't satisfied with the two deaths yet, i had somehow come up with the brilliant idea yesterday to catch another female i found and see if i could mate her. after trying unsuccessfully for 20 minutes or so she started acting strange and i let her go. looked for her this morning and she's almost dead too and barely hanging by her forelegs.

i really don’t know what to think about myself now, i’m sure you guys can understand how ashamed and disgusted i feel. i was thinking if their deaths were possibly related to some crickets they ate that day, i even fed the wild caught one. i’m still not 100% sure but i doubt it was just the crickets, since all of them were fed and 3 are still doing fine. plus i don’t see how a sick cricket could make a mantid start acting weird barely 10 minutes after she ate it. i feel the ones i freed have a good chance to reproduce one of them has been pretty fat for awhile and they’ve both been adults for over a month. tho one also started moving slower today and didn’t seem to be able to use one of her feet too well but was much better than the ones that ended up dying... tho the male is very healthy. even if the crickets were actually sick , they wouldn’t be better off in a cage than in a bush or tree, and since i’m sure i must have done something to cause this all, i doubt i could keep any alive long until i sort myself out. i don’t know what happened, everything just kept falling apart starting a few days ago this totally blows my last incident away, when most of my nymphs got cooked to death from the sun. i really want to thank you all so much you guys have been incredibly inspiring and helpful and i’ve learned so much just the short while i’ve been here. it really showed me how little i knew all my life and how much more there is to know. seriously, this place really has some amazing people and you all rock. not even one person bashed me for what i did, and instead shared their own messups and words of wisdom. i really think i will be able to try giving this another shot in the near future, hopefully even next spring. i realize that i’m bound to fail alot unless i put much more effort and research into this. i know so much could have been prevented if i had done it sooner. i’m sorry this ended up so terribly long i wanted to say some stuff and it suddenly turned into paragraphs and now pages.. i’ll just end by saying that, if it’s ok, i still want to come to this forum until i learn enough to give it another shot. i’m gonna take this break to put things in order, plan and research everything and definitely start building the overdue giant habitat apartment thing i considered for my future pets. thank you all again and please take care of yourselves and your awesome insects. sorry again for talking too much and good night.

 

[gripen]

It is most likely not your fault fo most of these deaths. Don't give up. This time of the year mantids life cycles end. One of your females was egg bound and the one from outside there is no explanation. Please please dont give up.

 

[Domanating]

We all feel down and guilty for seeing a mantis dying. Specially when i was new in this hobby, losing a praying-mantis was terrible. Now that i know more about them, how take care of them and after experiencing so many deaths, it's easier to see them go. Losing so many mantids in such a short period of time in your early days experience must be quite a punch for you. But everyone has been there and you've got to face that the world is unfair. It always is

 

[MantidLord]

I remember I left my mantids outside in the sun in glass containers...needless to say I was not happy when I came home hours later.

 

[Ntsees]

Males tend to get rougher as they age.

 

[minard734]

Don't give up man. I'm practically Ivan the Terrible by now with the amount of mantids having died under my care. Don't put it in the freezer yet either. It could live. I've had it happen to me. It's really 50/50.