cloud jaguar
Well-known member
My wife has a beautiful Egyptian Pygmi mantis "Mary" which she received from Rebecca (Mantisplace.com) as a 'mystery mantis.' She is a nice papyrus color and very healthy. When we received her as L3 we had some adults from another brood that were highly cannibalistic and seemed to tear each other badly when they mated. Of this set, most laid odd small misshapen ooths of which a total of 10 egyptians hatched - 3 are still alive as L3s.
Her mantis, which she recently named "Mary" was never mated with any of the adult males from the previous brood even though she reached maturity. We had considered mating her but declined given the extreme cannibalistic proclivities and violent mating practice of the other brood which seemed to result in the female's abdomens being perforated - they leaked goo for a couple of weeks then died
. So Mary was never mated or even housed with any other Egyptian - male or female. She has always lived in a 32 oz deli cup alone.
She laid two beautiful and large ooths - we never moistened the ooths and they just received a bit of incidental spray from her infrequent mistings. We thought it sad that she tried so hard to make really nice oothecae only to have them be infertile.
Today i just noticed that one of the ooths - a couple of months old - is HATCHING! My wife and I are 100% certain that iMary was never housed with another mantis so it absolutely could not have mated.
As far as i know, only Brunners Mantis is parthenogenic. Unless this mantis was fertilized magically, fertilized by airborne sperm, immaculately conceived, or is parthenogenic - it is physically impossible that she could be fertile yet the nymphs are hatching as i speak.
Very odd. :huh:
Her mantis, which she recently named "Mary" was never mated with any of the adult males from the previous brood even though she reached maturity. We had considered mating her but declined given the extreme cannibalistic proclivities and violent mating practice of the other brood which seemed to result in the female's abdomens being perforated - they leaked goo for a couple of weeks then died
. So Mary was never mated or even housed with any other Egyptian - male or female. She has always lived in a 32 oz deli cup alone.She laid two beautiful and large ooths - we never moistened the ooths and they just received a bit of incidental spray from her infrequent mistings. We thought it sad that she tried so hard to make really nice oothecae only to have them be infertile.
Today i just noticed that one of the ooths - a couple of months old - is HATCHING! My wife and I are 100% certain that iMary was never housed with another mantis so it absolutely could not have mated.
As far as i know, only Brunners Mantis is parthenogenic. Unless this mantis was fertilized magically, fertilized by airborne sperm, immaculately conceived, or is parthenogenic - it is physically impossible that she could be fertile yet the nymphs are hatching as i speak.
Very odd. :huh:
