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Nature Study – Praying Mantis Egg Case
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We purchased several insects to watch in recent months – tiny caterpillars that metamorphed into Painted Lady butterflies that we released, busy ants, and a praying mantis egg case. This morning after weeks of waiting, we woke to find 50 tiny mantids and they’re still coming! We will be keeping a few, sharing a lot, and releasing most. They are so cool to watch and relatively easy to care for.
My kids love watching them!
We did this last spring. They were still coming out of the egg case a week after they started. Keep watching, you will probably get lots more!
How amazing! Reading about your mantids reminds me of a photo I saw in National Geographic a couple of years ago, where a praying mantis caught a hummingbird. God’s world is always interesting. 🙂
Christie, you may enjoy this story! I laughed just thinking about again. Thanks for your post!
When my daughter was much younger … maybe four or five …. she loved to “create” little bowls of things she would find when we went out and about on walks or to the beach or just in the yard. I loved this so much that I would leave her little collections around the house on tables in pretty little bowls for us to admire. I’d had just such a little bowl sitting on the kitchen counter for months with little thought until a friend came to visit from out of town. She and I were sitting enjoying coffee in the kitchen and talking when all of the sudden we realized the counter was moving! Ugg, I thought … creepy little bugs! We jumped up and started spraying them and shrieking like silly girls (I’m not sure why this event illicited that reaction but …) We later figured out that the source of these “bugs” was what I’d thought was a nut in one of my daughter’s little nature bowls! They were baby praying mantis and I felt horrible at having killed them in a frenzy.
We had a similar situation when I was a girl. We found a mantis egg case on our Christmas tree and placed it on the fireplace mantle without much thought. Unfortunately the warm fire enticed the poor critters to hatch very early and they were everywhere you looked for a time. 🙂
We just got back from a vernal pool where we collected salamander eggs and a few of the nymphs. We’ve been studying vernal pools for the past few weeks and my son has been obsessed with salamanders for a long time. We’re hoping we can dig a small pool in our yard before the eggs hatch and we’ll release them there if they are spotted salamanders. (We found an adult spotted salamander in our yard a few years ago so assume they naturally live in our neighborhood, though don’t know where they lay their eggs.)
I was wondering how long you’ll keep the praying mantis. What do you do with them once they hatch? And what do they eat?
Best,
Shannon
Claire that cracks me up and reminds me of when dd5 collected acorns in a ziploc and unbeknowst to me kept the bag in her dresser’s treasure drawer. Weeks later when we were organizing her dresser, there were bunches of baby maggots in those bags. GROSS! Needless to say, the acorns were no more!
Mantids eat fruit flies, crickets, and EACH OTHER! We’re releasing them today, but keeping a few to watch. BTW, they are still coming out of the ootheca (egg case).
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