New Hobbyist Questions

[lionsden112002]

Do you keep your expired mantis? Are any of you also bug collectors? The kind that pin and display dead insects?

I have tried the search engine but am new to this forum and wasn't finding the answers.

Will a female mantis attract males if left outside in her cage?

(I was going to try this with my new mantis and as I was setting her cage out under my porch light a male mantis was walking up the door frame!! - either she works wonders or it was a coincidence. lol) I collected him and now will have a chance to breed my Chinese Mantis LU.

I really liked the acrylic cages I saw on this site.

Thanks in advance for any help on these inquiries.

Ken

 

[Asa]

Well, some of the gross among us, keep dead mantids. Female mantids will not necessarily attract males, so I'm inclined to think it was coincidence.

 

[Orin]

Mantids don't preserve very well when dried.

It's a good chance the female attracted the male, unless it was less than a few minutes.

 

[Hypoponera]

My answer to your questions is "yes". I do keep all my expired mantids and have them pinned in a collection. And yes, female mantids can attract males by releasing a phermone. However, if the male appeared within moments of your female going out, then it was probably there already.

 

[OGIGA]

I tried keeping some expired females but they just ended up fermenting and stinking really bad. :?

 

[joossa]

If done and set up properly, your preserved/pinned mantids can last forever. I had to look up many sources online and at the library to find a method that works best for me. I also have to give credit to YenSaw and one of his very helpful posts that relates to the subject somewhere on this forum.

Currently I have an entire shoe box dedicated to the mantid species that I keep, which includes nymphs, adults, ooths, and exoskeletons. A perfect display, at least for me.

 

[Krissim Klaw]

Nope, I don't keep my dead mantises. I guess you could say I prefer my buggies alive.

What I do instead is bury all of mantises around a fruit tree on my property. It's my little mantis cemetary. I do keep sheddings though usually I find myself scattering them into the wind when I bury the mantis they came from.