Haha! Yes! I hope he survives... Or maybe I'll just find a wahlbergii, orchid, or ghost ootheca online and hatch it... I'll say I found it in the field. :shifty: :innocent:Even if you never find him, he'll probably have just as good of a chance of surviving to adulthood. Like I said, I've found mine a long time after losing them, and I've also found them eating spiders or moths that have gotten into the house. Maybe he'll have less of a food source, but if you eliminate the possibility of predation you'll realize his chances are pretty good. These little guys will surprise you with their ability to find prey anywhere. One time I saw a mantis run about two feet toward a fly that had landed and actually catch it. So I wouldn't worry too much about him. He'll probably turn up eventually. In the meantime, go catch another mantis. Then when you find this one and you already have another one, maybe your parents will let you have both of them!
~Wolfie
Lol! I wonder if your parents would believe that! :lol: Has your T. sinensis ooth hatched yet?
I wonder if they would too... Maybe they've forgotten my "the Chinese (tenodera sinensis) and European (mantis religiosa) are not native to our region, but they have found it as a suitable place because of its climate" and "did you know there are regulations about releasing specific exotic species in the US?" talks. I'd probably be allowed to keep a handful...but I'd be told to let the others live their natural lives outside! XD What fun that'd be.
My male nymph had been free-ranging on a flower outside last week. I didn't see him a first, but he had slinked down to the base of the plant. He also liked to perch upside-down under the cone flower... I tried to tell him that he'd never catch anything that way, but he said it worked as a nice shade umbrella.
I got the ootheca at our local garden store... When we bought an ootheca years ago it hatched, so now I've had a 50% success rate. (BTW, I'm in Chat now if you or anyone else wants to join me.Inside. I'm probably going to be cleaning up this room later on today, so hopefully I'll find him. I think mantids do sometimes use flowers as umbrellas - I've seen them doing that a lot!
Where did you get your T. sinensis ooth? I haven't had much luck with store-bought oothecae.
)
Oh good! Well, you know nymphs . . . they possess incredible speed and elusive hiding powers.
A week or two, I think... He molted while I had him. He was quite a bit larger than I remembered, and sure enough, there was his exuvia! That's when I could tell for sure that he had 7 segments.How long did you have him before he ran away?
How big were the hoppers? You don't think they ate him do you? Do hoppers eat insects?What's strange is that he was in there - stalking grasshoppers, then getting whacked by jumping grasshoppers, then giving up and searching for a way out... His container was set to the side, and the next time I looked, he had vanished. The feeding hole is a rectangle - 2cmx1.5cm, but I never cut off the top part, so it works like a hinge. It was tiled inwards at about 25 degrees. So somehow he slipped out, but is nowhere to be found... UGH!
Remind me again how you all have confidence to let your mantids free-range on plants in the house?? :huh:
Nooo, the grasshoppers didn't eat him. The night before he got loose, I watched him eat a large grasshopper that was about an inch long. Then the next evening, the night when he got loose, I put in two smaller grasshoppers for him to eat. They were less than an inch long. The cage was sitting in one spot, then it got moved to another spot when he was just about to catch one... Next time I looked, which was probably just a couple minutes later, he was gone.
Do you mean a container that the mantis could get into to eat? If there were holes in the container for the mantis to get it, the flies would be out in mere minutes...
