I had ten african mantids one by one they died either by eating eachother or dying from hunger. in the end the strongest one was left. I went on holiday and left my mam to looking after the last mantid and gave her simple clear instructions; 'give the mantid two small crickets after two days make sure it has ate them then put one cricket in wait two more days and put two in then i will be back to carry on the feeding'. I asked her to tell me what she was going to do fo the mantid and shetold me then i showed her the box of tiny brown micro crickets and told her they were the ones to give it. Everything seemed okay until i got back off a week holiday. I walked into my room and looked in the tank and all i could see was crickets after crickets on the mantid's branches, about 20-30 in with the mantid(the mantid had managed to escape the onslaught of crickets by hiding on the net roof only the mantid had lost rear leg to the cricket attack. Immedeatley i got the crickets out of the tank made sure there where none left gave the tank a spray checked the mantids stub leg and sprayed it with water. Tha tnight something strange happened. In the morning i got out of bed and went over to the tank to check on the mantid. It Had completely dissapeared. I checked the tank for any escape holes checked the floor as the mantid could have fallin when molting but even when i seived the fine flooring no sign of my mantid but i found a small larvae but way to small to have eaten a hole mantid.(the mantid was a nymph on its 3rd instar). It had completely dissapeared and this was about 1-2years ago and until three weeks ago i haven't had any mantids.
