Past South Carolina Mantis Mystery

[Mantis Man13]

I got a wild female South Carolina mantis from my friend 2 years ago, and it seemed to be an adult. The female had weird looking wings that were very frazzled. A month later I found her dead on the floor one morning, with a molt she was trying to get out of. This makes absolutely NO sense! The female was even a little more than 2 inches before this happened,, the average size I find these females in the wild. How can a mantis with wings molt again? It boggles with my mind, can someone please tell me why this happened.

 

[Sticky]

Pictures?

 

[LAME]

sure it wasn't a sub adult going through its final?

 

[Mantis Man13]

I have no pictures as I buried the mantis, but it was NOT a sub adult. It clearly had wings, I even compared it to my other South Carolina females when I had it.

 

[Mantis Man13]

Honestly, this is the number one weirdest thing that has happened to me in my 4 years of keeping mantises. Also, as I said before the mantis was already at adult size and looked exactly like an adult and had wings before it tried to molt.

 

[Ranitomeya]

It may have had a hormonal imbalance that caused it to try to molt again. It would have been an extraordinarily rare occurrence and something would have been amazing to have documented.

Most insects no longer have the ability to molt after adulthood--especially if they have wings as those would impede to molt. The Ephemeroptera, the mayflies, are one of the strange insects that do molt again after they get their wings.

 

[Mantis Man13]

Well that would explain why it barely even got out of the molt.

 

[Aryia]

Did the frazzled wings look like new wings that haven't been extended yet? Some mantises become so close to their adult molt that their wings literally blow out their backs, I've seen it several times with individuals and it looks like they already molted since their wings are out but their exoskeletons still isn't.