Sensing Pheromones??

[Benayla]

Well, the wait is almost over, not long until my first experience breeding my Giant Asian Praying Mantises, but I was wondering about something....As soon as they reached adulthood, I went ahead and put Dracula's Cage next to Fluffy's, so that when she starts emitting Pheromones and he picked up on it, that would make timing this a lot easier. But now I'm left wondering if picking those up is possible through their cages.

But when I noticed them glaring each other down I had to put a stuffed animal in between them, so I did the same thing with my other pair, except I put two (Dark Types) between them. So....I'm sure that in the wild Mantises can pick up on pheromones from miles away, but in this situation will a plastic cage just insulate that?? I mean I haven't seen Dracula or Sonamy up against the edge of their cages. 

 

[Tehshlendo]

Well it's going to vary here based on a few variables, that being how well the pheromones travel through the air and essentially how well the other mantis would be able to detect the pheromone in the air, similar to how a shark can sense blood in very small ppm amounts in water.  With how close the cages are located I imagine that as long as there is good air flow the pheromones are going to circulate out of the cages effectively enough but I wouldn't be able to say that 100%

 

[Zeppy44]

Some of the older posts talk about moving the male out of the bug room for a few days. The idea being the air had been over saturated in pheromones and male needed time away from the females.