P. paradoxa, put your hands in the air

[Mantibama]

I was cleaning my mantis containers for the first time today and I noticed an interesting behavior in my P. paradoxa. In between cleaning the containers I would keep the ghosts on my arm. Occasionally it appeared as though they would look directly at me and reach up in the air, on the front of their bodies and not laterally, with their forelegs and wave them around. It did not seem like a startle display (although I'm not sure what this looks like in the ghosts), but I noticed they seemed to want to climb higher as they did this. I would provide my hand every time they would wave their forelegs in front of them, and every time they would climb up higher. They would then crawl around my other arm for a short amount of time, stop, look up at me again and repeat the process. Has anyone noticed this pattern? Any guesses as to the reason for this? Surely they aren't anticipating my providing them with a means to climb higher.

 

[Rick]

Every mantis I have ever had does that. They are just reaching for next higher perch.

 

[bassist]

What Rick said ^

BUT Rick even you have to admit it's adorable ;p

 

[Rick]

What Rick said ^ BUT Rick even you have to admit it's adorable ;p

I guess. :lol:

 

[Mantibama]

Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like. But I guess what I thought was strange was that there wasn't an available perch to begin with. Like they were "saying" give me something to climb on. Are they intelligent enough to be conditioned to handling?

 

[bassist]

They don't see like we do when it comes to judging distance.

 

[Mantibama]

They don't see like we do.

I'm aware of this. But I don't see how I'm supposed to extrapolate an answer to this behavior based on that single sentence. Do they have bad depth perception? I guess that could explain why they probe the air.

lol... nvm you just edited.

 

[hibiscusmile]

haha, Ricks funny! never thought I would live to see the day, he admit it! They just wanna be held papa! give em a hug! :wub: