Hi my name is Nile i have just started keeping mantids and my first mantis i ever kept was miomantis paykuli i had lots of othecas somethin like 90 nymphs but today i decided to go away for 10 minutes when i was breeding my praying mantids and suddenly i come back and see my female praying mantid eating the male my first instinct was to knock her of him she had eaten a arm and an eye is there anyway i can help him recover or will he just die as pressumed I put the female back in her inclosure
Nilo
- Thread starter nilo
- Start date
Help Support Mantidforum:
Zeppy44
Well-known member
Heyas nilo and welcome.
Hello Nile and welcome to the forum
Not sure why another new introduction, as you already did one, but for breeding questions or health issues you could ask for help there. I am though responding to your post comments (or is it questions?) below.
Before breeding it is recommended to over feed the female a few days before attempting to breed them, and feed her right before introducing the male as well (so she is busy with her hands, and should be full). I'm not sure how you got the male away from the female, hopefully by careful means; otherwise, if the female is hurt too you run the risk of loosing them both.
A mantis can survive with a missing arm and eye but there may be other damage to his head, other arm, or elsewhere. I would recommend a full exam looking for other signs of damage/injury.
If there are no other injuries found he should stop bleeding soon and should survive (you can rub honey on the injuries as it is a natural antiseptic); however, with only one arm and one eye he will need to be hand fed from tweezers for several weeks as he will find it difficult at best to impossible capturing his own prey. He will likely relearn/cope with his new deformities in time, but the missing eye will likely mean he will never be able to catch prey (no depth perception), and may require hand feeding the rest of his life.
Besides using tweezers/thongs to feed him, you can also rig-up a feeding stand using a thumbtack, read the post here.
Not sure why another new introduction, as you already did one, but for breeding questions or health issues you could ask for help there. I am though responding to your post comments (or is it questions?) below.
Females will kill and eat the male at times seemingly at random, but typically simply as the female is hungry or the male made a stupid mistake and got the wraith of the female.
Before breeding it is recommended to over feed the female a few days before attempting to breed them, and feed her right before introducing the male as well (so she is busy with her hands, and should be full). I'm not sure how you got the male away from the female, hopefully by careful means; otherwise, if the female is hurt too you run the risk of loosing them both.
A mantis can survive with a missing arm and eye but there may be other damage to his head, other arm, or elsewhere. I would recommend a full exam looking for other signs of damage/injury.
If there are no other injuries found he should stop bleeding soon and should survive (you can rub honey on the injuries as it is a natural antiseptic); however, with only one arm and one eye he will need to be hand fed from tweezers for several weeks as he will find it difficult at best to impossible capturing his own prey. He will likely relearn/cope with his new deformities in time, but the missing eye will likely mean he will never be able to catch prey (no depth perception), and may require hand feeding the rest of his life.
Besides using tweezers/thongs to feed him, you can also rig-up a feeding stand using a thumbtack, read the post here.
Did they mate? He can still mate, but unlikely he will live long
