New Mom of Red armed Mantis

diane · Jun 17, 2017

Hello and thank you for allowing me into the forum. In April I got a female red armed mantis from a reptile show in NY. It's my first experience with a mantis at home....and its been a trip. I find myself scouring the internet for info daily, checking on her obsessively and finding myself more attached to her than I thought I ever would be. I'm not new to the whole animal thing....many moons ago I was a wildlife rehabilitator and animal caregiver at a Nature Center so I've worked with almost every local (state of CT) animal you can think of as well as exotics that we kept in our teaching collection.

We just had a VERY dramatic molt over here this week. I inadvertently interrupted my mantis JUST as she was about to molt. I flipped the screen over that she was hanging from....(always her favorite place to be) and within SECONDS she collapsed (thought she was dead) and proceeded to molt right in front of our eyes. It was fascinating yet devastating as I knew she was supposed to be upside down. MUCH drama....but bottom line here we are 4 days out from that and she appears to be ok...eating etc. But I will post more questions about that event on a different (appropriate) thread.

Thanks for having me here and talk more soon!

CosbyArt · Jun 17, 2017

Hello Diane and welcome to the forum

Ah a Hierodula venosa, many here are large fans of Hierodula sp. as they are larger, friendly, and a inquisitive mantids (also on my list of species to try). Yes most mantids will perch onto their containers lid, and spend most of their life there hanging (helps them stay clean when eating with debris falling, helps them to hide from birds flying overhead when under a leaf, and keeps other predators away while maintaining a view to catch prey).

Sorry to hear of the mismolt due to the removed lid. If something like that happens again replace the lid carefully as soon as you notice it, as they use the gravity to help them to dry out and harden properly during the molt process. A mantis laid flat can not molt successfully, hopefully yours was about done molting before the incident.