What is up with my mantis??

[jenner59]

I swear...

This little thing surprises me all the time. So I recently complained on the feeding forum that my mantis has seemd to reject crickets. She's apparently too good for them. She catches them all the time, chews through half their head or bites off a leg or two and then sets them free. It's been months since she's eaten anything whole. Just the other day I finally found her a daddy long leg, which she promptly de-limbed and dropped the body.

whatthehell!? She doesn't eat for weeks and then nibbles on a cricket drumstick and tosses it. I would catch some variety for her, but I swear there's nothing outside. I live in Seattle. There aren't even any bees around. No wasps. No beetles. No moths even.

Well that's not the end of it.

Last week I threw a couple of carrots to the one cricket sitting on death row in her enclosure. And what happens?

The mantis comes down off the roof and nibbles at the carrots?!! Is it because I'm in the Northwest? My mantis is doomed to become a liberal hippy vegetarian mantis?(no offense anyone) Next thing I know I'll find her protesting cruelty against crickets. sheesh!

So I buy her a gift this weekend.

A small plant to grow in her enclosure. Well I think she nearly died last night. I woke up and she was acting really weird, walking funny, constantly cleaning her legs ( I mean constantly ). So I took her out. Her balance got better, but she kept cleaning her legs, and she did this thing where she tasted everything she stepped on. She tasted my finger, tasted the branch she's been climbing on for months, and you guessed it, tasting the plant I bought.

What's going on with my mantis?

Are plants bad for them? It's just a little ivy vine I got at the greenhouse. Why won't she ate anymore? Maybe I don't live in a good place for raising these little guys. I sure enjoy it though.

 

[HepCatMoe]

only somebody from the pacific northwest would be pc enough to worry about hippys being offended about being called hippys. :lol:

i do think ivy can be poisoness though. if you want to use plants in your enclosure its probably best to stick with pothos.

 

[OGIGA]

That's the weirdest mantis story I ever heard. You have a really special mantis. If she's really going to starve, try giving her canned tuna. You can eat the rest because I don't think a mantis will finish off a can of tuna.

 

[jplelito]

The 'tasting everything' thing - if this is her bending down and licking at the surface with her mouthparts - then she is thirsty.

You could try making a diluted honey or sugar water solution and dropping some with a pipette or eyedropper right in front of her, and see if she drinks that. Sometimes thirsty mantids ignore food and keep looking for water.

If not.. then you have a really unique mantid there.

 

[hibiscusmile]

I think JpLeplito is right, it probably wants water. But it could be like the rest of us, when I eat chicken, I go for the breast meat, different strokes for different folks I always say...

 

[Rick]

That mantis needs water! Some mantids just don't eat alot. Get some spaghnum moss and put about a half inch in the bottom of the enclosure and keep it moist. Mist the inside of the tank lightly once a day until she quits drinking the water and then do it every other day.

 

[Way.Of.The.Mantis]

What is good, is to use its cleaning habits against it, to make it eat, using a small penknife or cocktail stick, smear honey on its inner front forelimbs, them it will eat it as it cleans itself..you might need to dilute the honey first though, but this has never been a problem for me!

Hope all goes well

 

[robo mantis]

it wants water

 

[hibiscusmile]

Yeah, that is how a lot of them get their water rations, by sucking it off of their limbs. I wrote on one of these forums how I forgot to mist one day and a nymph ran to the watered tissue when I watered it and drank itself to death. Thanks for making me remember that again Some things in life never leave you! ps... a lot of people say they do not need water, (not meaning your species, but mantis in particular), but I say every living thing on Gods green earth, need water in one form or another to survive.

 

[robo mantis]

Yes i agree

 

[jenner59]

thanks for the responses here folks. I was afraid I was doing somethiong wrong. The enclosure is usually plenty humid, but maybe that was a dry couple days.

Thanks for all the responses!

Ivy's out of the home. Manits is quenched. He's still biting off heads and tossing them away, but he's not dead either, and he's been doing that for months. So it can't be starving.