Wanted to share a funny little tid bit about the behavior I witnessed with my wandering violins last night. In order to tell my story, I do have to give you a backstory of my situation though.
BACKSTORY:I have 7 wandering violins. Got them all as L2 nymphs, so they were all the same age when I got them. 4 of them molted to adulthood in February and March (two females and two males). One of my guys was the first to molt to adulthood in February, while my girls and the other guy molted mid march. So when my ladies were finally "of age," the poor guy was very ready and determined to mate with the ladies, but the ladies were not quite ready to cooperate! Cuz of this, he got some injuries as he aged from falling off /getting knocked off of the ladies backs! They would literally lift their raptors up in the air, looking as if they were punching the air trying to get him off, and nimble on his front raptors, if it was resting close enough to their mouths that they could reach! So needless to say my poor old guy is missing some of his fingers on his front raptors, and has some injuries to his other legs, which makes it hard for him to climb and get around sometimes, so these days he spends a lot of time on the ground. When they first molted, I kept the females in one cage and the males in another. Meanwhile, my 3 sub adults have their own cage.
Once all 4 of the first batch were adults for at least 2 weeks, I started keeping one female and one male together in each cage instead of separating them by sex. This is because I noticed that once my girls started laying, one of the females would try to knock down/eat the ooth of the other female once she was done laying it! Has anyone else witnessed this bizarre behavior with communal female mantises before? I was not expecting that!
FAST FORWARD TO MONDAY NIGHT: Okay, so now I can finally get to my story! A few weeks back one of my subadult males finally molted to adulthood, almost two months later than the others! I felt like it took forever! So weird! Yesterday marked his two week anniversary of his final molt, and I noticed the female who was in the cage with the old guy was calling! So I decided to put the young stud in with the old guy and the calling lady on Monday night. Tuesday I woke up and she was still calling, she had both the males staring at her and wiggling their antennae towards her but I kind of felt bad for the old guy, because he couldn't get to her anyway. Fast Forward to Tuesday night, I came home from work and saw the young stud hanging out right besides her and staring at right at her! All of the sudden, he fluffed his wings out (almost looked like a defense pose) and jumped on her back! She really didn't seem to mind this time, and he stayed there throughout the night. This morning, I saw him separated from her and in the opposite corner of the cage. It is interesting to me that since my old guy got injured, this was the first time I have witnessed any mounting. It is also interesting that this particular female is now about 5 or 6 ooths into adulthood. I have heard people on these forums recommend that you re-mate your females after they lay 5 to 6 ooths, so it is funny that she started calling on her own, especially since this is the first time I have ever witnessed her calling in her adult life! I wonder if instinct told her it was time?
Anyway, I just wanted to share this story, because so far of all the species THAT I have been keeping, these are my oldest, and I believe the most interesting to watch of all my species so far! I have really have been enjoying observing all their adult behaviors as they age.
