Thistle Mantis Dried Like This

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Predatorhousepet

Predatorhousepet

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Location
San Antonio, TX
My thistle mantis molted last night to adulthood and the wings dried in this position, they cannot be folded down. Otherwise the mantis is fine and suffers no disability (other than not being able to fly.) 

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First of all, congrats on the molt! Second, Thistles are known for mismolt to adult, so your male got lucky. He should still be able to breed and such. He's still beautiful, especially because his wings dried open like that! 

- MantisGirl13download

 
Gratz on the molt.

Those wings won't give problems I think. As long if he is healthy. It looks cool really, like a big cape.

 
He is cool looking isn't he. Who knows why he didn't try to fold his wings, maybe he was just too exhausted from the molt to be bothered, his wings just stayed in the position gravity put them in. At least he's got a good appetite and seems fine otherwise. He was the first of my thistles to reach adulthood, two more are not far behind they should molt any day now.

 
My female thistle dried badly too but not so much that it's super debilitating, she isn't an adult yet so hopefully her next molt fixes the problem. Her left raptorial arm came out wonky so she can't bend it inward to the praying position, it stays permanently splayed outward. She can use it to move and hang onto stuff, but it's useless for hunting & eating. She's able to hold prey with her good arm and eat it but she has a lot of trouble catching the prey one handed so I just hand it to her with tweezers. She also has trouble controlling the left front walking leg next to the bad raptorial arm, she can move it but can't bend it at the "knee" much like she can't bend her arm at the "elbow". She can still hang from her branch and the ceiling so I'm pretty sure she will be able to molt. I'll keep a close eye on her when the time comes because she's much more likely to fall in her condition. She just has the one molt left before becoming an adult, hopefully that's enough to fix the problem with the joints on her left side.

 
hysteresis said:
@Predatorhousepet mine are close too.

A male and two females.
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I have one female and two males. One male is pictured and the other is still L5. The female just molted last night and has one more molt to go to become an adult. Now I've had two minor mismolts out of two, at least nothing truly debilitating happened to them. Good luck with yours, hopefully they'll be fine.

 
hysteresis said:
I had one molt yesterday. No issue.
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Good to hear it got through the molt perfectly!

Little Mantis said:
I hope her next molt will fix it.
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Me too. Hopefully she doesn't fall in the process. I think she fell with this last molt when she was already mostly dry but landed in a position that caused her joint problems. She was on the bottom of her enclosure when I found her barely hanging onto her branch with her bad side wedged under it so she was unable to bend them back to finish drying. She was lively and hungry when I found her but her head was doing this weird twitchy thing not unlike someone with Parkinson's disease. The twitching cleared up after I gave her food and water and she hasn't done it since. Strange, no?

 
I have one thistle in particular that wants to eat everyone on the shelf. 😂

It shakes uncontrollably,  clawing, trying to get through the side of his cup.

 
Oh yes thistles are especially bad about that. I had one female nymph that would watch everything going on outside her deli cup and she would strike the side of the cup at any shadow or perceived movement near her. I would hear her striking at the plastic every 5 minutes for hours on end until I fed her. (She'd do this all night while I was trying to sleep too.) And when I finally did feed her she would only be quiet & calm for about 3 to 4 hours before she was back at it again. It's like she thought I was starving her even though I had fed her generously just a few hours earlier.

And most thistles do have a whole body twitch when hunting or enjoying their food but what this female was doing was very different. She wasn't shaking her body, only her head, and she did it in a way that looked like she had a neurological disorder. This combined with her joints drying badly from what was likely a fall had me greatly concerned that she had given herself brain damage too but as soon as I fed her, she focused like a laser on the food and the head shake disappeared. It hasn't returned since. I don't know what to make of it but I'm so glad she's doing better.

She's learning how to move around better with her bad limbs. She was super clumsy about it at first staying on the branch near the the bottom of her enclosure but now she can drag herself up her branch and kinda half hang from the ceiling half on the branch. I'm thinking I should install some fiberglass window screen or tulle on the sides of her terrarium so she can use it to climb. I'm going to curve it inward towards the bottom like a safety net to catch her if she falls. I think I saw @Synapze do something similar for one of his injured mantises.

 
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Predatorhousepet said:
Oh yes thistles are especially bad about that. I had one female nymph that would watch everything going on outside her deli cup and she would strike the side of the cup at any shadow or perceived movement near her. I would hear her striking at the plastic every 5 minutes for hours on end until I fed her. (She'd do this all night while I was trying to sleep too.) And when I finally did feed her she would only be quiet & calm for about 3 to 4 hours before she was back at it again. It's like she thought I was starving her even though I had fed her generously just a few hours earlier.

And most thistles do have a whole body twitch when hunting or enjoying their food but what this female was doing was very different. She wasn't shaking her body, only her head, and she did it in a way that looked like she had a neurological disorder. This combined with her joints drying badly from what was likely a fall had me greatly concerned that she had given herself brain damage too but as soon as I fed her, she focused like a laser on the food and the head shake disappeared. It hasn't returned since. I don't know what to make of it but I'm so glad she's doing better.

She's learning how to move around better with her bad limbs. She was super clumsy about it at first staying on the branch near the the bottom of her enclosure but now she can drag herself up her branch and kinda half hang from the ceiling half on the branch. I'm thinking I should install some fiberglass window screen or tulle on the sides of her terrarium so she can use it to climb. I'm going to curve it inward towards the bottom like a safety net to catch her if she falls. I think I saw @Synapze do something similar for one of his injured mantises.
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I guess what they say about being dropped on the head as a child is true!  Haha.  Congrats on the final molt.  At least he is in a perpetual threat posture and nobody will mess with him!

 
Interesting about the head twitch. My adult female truncata spent about two or three days in the mail and it was kind of cold outside. When she arrived she had a little head shake for a few days, but I warmed her up and fed her, and now it’s gone. I was a little concerned, but now she’s acts normally and seems perfectly healthy. I wonder if it could’ve been similar?

 

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