too much mantid action in one day

[wuwu]

so much happened in my mantid paradise today, 2 firsts and 2 close calls. i witnessed a mantid molting for the first time today. thanks to my G. gongylodes for my first time. while he was about 80% done, another G. gongylodes nearby saw this as an opportunity to attack and grabbed his leg. he got one bite in before i pried him free. i saw a drop of blood, but he seems fine now. thank god i was there to save him. i'm seperating them all tonight, i don't think any mantid is 100% communal.

i also mated my first mantids today, my 2 pairs of m. paykullii. i put my green female in with 2 males. the second she saw a male, she got all excited and starting doing her sexy dance. her abdomen starting moving violently, probably releasing phermones. i could tell that she was definitely ready and willing. the male responded by doing a sexy dance of his very own. his abdomen started coming alive and pointed towards her. then all of a sudden, he flew on her back and started mating.

while all this was happening, the movements caught the eye of the other male below. he stared at the couple for the longest time. what a pervert. :lol:

i felt bad for him so i put in my other female, which is brown. the second i put her in, he hopped on her back. he must have been aroused from watching the other couple. as he flew on her back, the movement caught the eye of the green female, who is still mating. she grabs him and was about to bite into him when i pried him free. fortunately, my intervention didn't bother either of the couples. they continued mating as if nothing's happened. the first couple finished in about 2 hours. the male immediately dropped into the ground, away from the female's deadly arms. as i'm writing this post, i noticed that the second couple is done as well. took them around 2.5 hours. i guess this male has more stamina. :lol:

 

[julian camilo]

great post! just wanted to mention, thats how my g.gonylodes ate each other on both occasions, while the "victim" was moulting. just out of curiosity, what do you feed them?

 

[wuwu]

i started with the smaller fruitflies, because stupid petsmart had them labeled as hydei, so i thought i had the bigger fruitflies. then i started feeding them houseflies since they're big enough to handle them, even as L1's. now i feed them mostly the bigger fruitflies, d. hydei because the culture i have yields so many flies! i can feed over a hundred a day and there's plenty left the next day.

what do you feed yours?

 

[julian camilo]

i feed mine bluebottles and bumblebess mainly, occasionally moths, though earlier on when the cannibalism incident happened i was a bit hardup for flies and had to resort to a cricket or two once or twice. i made a thread a slightly hystrionic/curious (depending which way you look at it) thread about the whole thing, its here:

http://www.mantidforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2879

and someone suggested the cannibalism may have occoured because of incorrect diet. but your diet sounds perfectly fine and still they eat each other. im assuming your enclosure is of adequate size too. aahh the plot thickens. i wonder what drives such a usually peaceful species to eat their brethren... :roll: :wink:

 

[Jwonni]

i wonder what drives such a usually peaceful species to eat their brethren

sounds like just the opportunity of an easy meal they seem to do it when others are shedding and soft therefore unlikey to cause them any damage, if they know they are not going to take any damage then why not

Easy meal + Space in belly = Why not

 

[jplelito]

I've noticed cannibalizations at molting before as well.

My thoughts, based on experience and hunches, not experiments (yet):

1. Mantids seem to recognize each other as fellow mantids (think how baby Miomantis, for example, cluster up near their egg case but don't often cannibalize each other; think also about arm-waving displays in many young nymphs when they run into each other). This must surely be based on some visual pattern recognition. At molting, they look different, so maybe they lose the ability to know a mantid is a mantid when that mantid is molting and looks weird.

2. Mantids, when molting, pulsate and move rhythmically in order to shed their exoskeleton. To my mammalian eyes this looks like a lot like how a caterpillar (a favorite mantid food, in my experience) moves. Maybe, in addition to number one, or even because of it, they also perceive this motion as meaning a food item?

Of course, in any predator, there is always simply the point, wisely made above: empty belly + easy meal = why not?

Who hasn't looked at a bag of chips and thought that?

 

[julian camilo]

when theyve just hatched, they arent really that interested in any food, let alone each other, i find. it takes at least a day for them to start going after food. also, for a species like g.gongylodes, that doesnt really look twice at something simply pulsating like a caterpillar or waxworm or maggot, this doesnt hold. they prefer fast moving flying things. sometimes even if a fly is walking past quite quickly, they take no notice, as soon as theres a quick movement (sometimes me standing up or moving my hand) they fix onto it.

the arm waving thing, ive never quite got it. i used to think it was nymphs communicating in some way, at the very least on a "im a mantis too, back off cos i could give you a run for your money" or "look how big i am". but ive got quite a few p.wahlbergii nymphs L2/L3 seperated into foam cups with mesh lids, theyre in shoeboxes. so, the only view they have is up through the mesh, where they see nothing. they cant see laterally into other cups to see other mantids. however, sometimes when i check up on them, theyre still doing the arm waving thing, seemingly at nothing, on their own. so it confuses me. also, when they were together, id see a few of them waving their arms at nothing. so maybe they do this for other reasons? i cant think what though.