I know I’m very late to the thread but just today I was trying to mate my Chinese mantises (for the 5th time unsuccessfully). Every time I give the female a cricket then place the male just behind her. He always freezes for 20 minutes and doesn’t start his slo-mo walk toward her until she’s just finishing up her meal. By the time he’s a couple inches behind her she’s completely done and does that threatening head turn to let him know he’s dead meat if he takes one more step. Then he slowly backs up, Turns and flies out of there. I get so frustrated that he wastes soooo much time while she’s eating. So today, while she was eating I slid a 12” long wooden dowel about the diameter of a pencil in front of her with one end about 5” from where she stood. Whenever she started to turn her head to see if she had a stalker I would just give that dowel a little movement with my finger and she would redirect her attention to is and forget all about that male behind her. It was a simple distraction technique that worked well. Each time I moved that dowel she would stare intently at it for a good 20 minutes before she would decide it wasn’t a threat. Then when she started to look away from it again I would just give the dowel another nudge and she’d snap her attention right back on it. It took my guy 3-1/2 hours to finally get to a point where he could leap on her and attempt to mount. Unfortunately, I had clipped her wings halfway up because of a bad molt that left them deformed and ruffled. It’s becoming apparent the male needs those wings to properly mount and connect with her because she crawled for the edge of my table trying to rid herself of him and he finally dismounted her and fled for dear life. I was soooo frustrated. But I now know that the dowel distraction works!
