Male or female?

[Logan_123]

So I have this chinese mantis that molted before all my others and I was wondering if it's female or male? And on the forum I can never put a picture in because it always says upload fail...

I think it has seven lines, but idk because it molted before all the others and is bigger than the others when they moulted

 

[Mystymantis]

If the abdomen has 7 lines then it is a male, the 8th line is sometimes hard to tell. Try counting the individual abdomen segments (unless that is what you mean by lines?), if you count 7-8 then it is a male, (males have 8 segments), and if you see 5-6 it is a female (Females have 6 segments, but like I said sometimes you can't tell that last one.) What instar is your Chinese mantis at?

Maybe try resizing the image to upload it? maybe it is too large or something.

 

[Logan_123]

My mantids are l4 

 

[Ocelotbren]

I had issues uploading images this week as well and ended up putting them on an image hosting site and linking to them here instead.  Pictures would help a lot in identifying the gender though.  I also found this post really helpful when figuring out if my Chinese mantids were male or female:



I know it can be hard to tell on smaller instars and I actually changed my mind on my female after she molted once - maybe to L5?  I don't remember for sure.  But I know I thought I had two males up until then.