Praying Mantis

[sam fisher]

haha this is surprisingly interesting. answer me a few questions:

where do you keep it? does it need an incubated cage or can you keep it in a plastic fish tank? what does it need in the cage? what food does it eat and how much is the food? how long do they live for? are they safe to handle or do they bite a lot? how often do they eat? do they actually recognize you i.e. they would attack someone else but not you?

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in a plastic tank with a smallish heat pad under neath it. basicaly just vermaculite and something to climb on liek a stick. it eats anything but preferes cricket but now it is big it eats adult locusts. eats one usually every day but some times only once every few days so it is pretty cheap plus we breed them sometimes(locusts) so very cheap for us. For water they drink droplets of the edge of the tank so we spray some water on every day. They also seem to derive some moisture from their pray. usually bites the first time you handle it. I did not think it had a brain that remembered things but seems to not be worried by being held by us anymore. i have not let anyone hold it incase they decided to try and crush it.

 

[finty]

Will you take some pictures of your set-up sam? I might get one, if only to see it eating.

Do you just leave it's food in the tank or put it in at a specified time?

 

[sam fisher]

you can leave it in
they stay up on the ceiling if they do not feel safe. They stay up their anyway. But if its big pray only to put one in at a time of they may not eat as feel the prey may gang up to retaliate. I would take a pic but my dad resists on usign his USB mouse instead of a PS2 so the webcam freezes his pc

 

[killbarney]

you can leave it in
they stay up on the ceiling if they do not feel safe. They stay up their anyway. But if its big pray only to put one in at a time of they may not eat as feel the prey may gang up to retaliate.

^^ Battle Royal, then again, maybe not! You said earlier that the mantis was in the £15-30 range, so how much would the 'smallish' heat mat be about? and also a small plastic fish tank would do then? :rolleyes:

 

[mattbakse]

hahaha man i want to get more... awhile ago i bought an egg sack and hundreds of them were born but they all escaped through the holes in the cage so we had hundreds of baby mantis running around... hmm spring time soon... i could get some more egg sacks...

 

[sam fisher]

£15-£30 included the smalll cage and heat matt. it was about £30 ounds all thogether i think. Mantids only live for a short time.

 

[killbarney]

Whoa that's well cheap. :rolleyes: