How to Care for Praying Mantises!

if you're looking for a unique pet that doesn't require special heating lighting or much cleaning look no further than the praying mantis praying mantises aren't a very long-lived pet it takes about four to six months for a juvenile to reach adulthood and that they live around three to eight months more after that females typically live longer than males and usually smaller species don't quite live as long as larger species of mantises some mantises only grow to about an inch long and those are the shorter looped species whereas others can grow up to four inches long and unlike dogs where larger species don't live quite as long those are the longer lived species in the Mantis world there are all sorts of different types that you can keep as pets some are easier to find that others some are easier to take care of than others these two are Arizona mantises yeah we're - they're Carolina's for a second these two are Arizona mantises but my favorite species I guess would either be the orchid mantis which is beautiful but expensive or the philic rania paradox though which is the scientific name for the ghost mantis ghost mantis is like this one look like dead leaves it's perfect cryptic coloration great camouflage and the way they sway back and forth to try to look like a leaf kind of swaying in the wind is just so bizarre they're like raising a little alien insects but really really neat pets look at you go there's not even a breeze on you one thing you may have already heard about preying mantises is that they are cannibalistic some species more so than others ghosts are one that can sometimes be kept communally but to be on the safe side we recommend housing each bug in its own individual enclosure those enclosures should be around three times the length of the insects body and about two times their width this should give them adequate space to be able to multiply since when these insects molt they hang upside down and they literally slide out of their own old skin or their exoskeleton and they leave it behind so if their enclosure isn't deep enough they're gonna hit themselves and then mult improperly and molting is the number one reason why these guys die is just because they're not able to do it properly as the Mantis grows it sheds its skin and becomes a larger in stars what we call it so when they first hatch from their Ithaca or egg case they are a first instar or l1 baby mantis as they shed or after they shed that first time they're than a second instar or an l2 this goes on and on until they reach about LH or 8th instar when they become adults you do not want to house a small baby mantis in a huge adult enclosure though because then they're not gonna be able to easily find and hunt their prey items which consists of live food only we'll get into that a little bit later so we recommend for babies or nymphs just keep them in a small little cup this is actually a beta cap for betta cup if you want to say it technically correct from a pet store they always usually have extras of these so we just talk to the employees and get a few and one baby per cup works really well but the plastic cup here there the plastic lid rather is kind of hard for them to hang on to while they are molting so to help them get a better grip we find that if you use a square of toilet paper underneath the lid then that gives them a little bit of a grip to hang from to aid in ventilation because you don't want it to be stagnant air in there and they need ventilation to breathe of course you can actually pop out the lid the middle of this lid and then the paper towel will provide a good barrier so that they can't get out and their bugs can't crawl out but air can still come in as the Mantis grows you can increase their enclosure size to one of these larger cups like this or if you have a large species of mantis you can even use something as big as like a pretzel or like a cheese ball container these work excellent for the adults larger species of preying mantises all right now you've got your empty cup or empty container what do you put inside the substrate can be one of various things actually there's a few different types that'll work a lot of people find success in paper towels cocoa husks or eco earth and spagna moss basically anything that retains humidity you want high humidity for premixes to allow them to shed if it's too dry they're going to get stuck in their old skin and that's when they start losing limbs or they just died during the shedding process so anything that holds in moisture and slowly releases it over time works really well we personally really like for babies to use paper towels because it's easy to clean out and the white paper towels with like a dark bug crawling around on it will make the prey item easy for the Mantis to find for bigger mantises you can use something like eco earth works really really well and then as the Mantis goes to the bathroom and creates waste or if fungus starts to grow because I mean any environment that has high humidity levels is probably gonna start growing mold or fungus --is just throw in some spring tails in the bedding and they will eat it themselves and they will kind of clean the environment on their own and you won't have to clean anything spring tails are very small insects that are used in like bioactive enclosures and if you want you can use something even a little bit bigger than spring tails you can use isopods and they'll break down feces as well but they don't tackle the funguses or bacteria that may start developing in the substrate as well as springtails do so we just recommend and we just throwing some spring tails in each of their enclosures also inside of the enclosure you want to provide some sort of sticks or things for the bugs to crawl on honestly though they spend like 99 percent of their time flipped upside down hanging on the lid which is why it's so essential to have some sort of paper product or something with traction to allow the bug to actually hang on to it easily because they just like hanging upside down from the lid brand-new baby mantises that have just hatched can usually be kept together until they shed their first time and therefore become second in stars but once they're in L 2 or a second instar that's when they start to become cannibalistic so that's when it's very essential to separate them individually when it comes to feeding your praying mantis they will only eat live insects I think they like the movement to catches their eye and then they're able to catch it for the size of the insect there's no really good rule of thumb like there are for like there's for snakes or lizards instead you just have to look at their current size and therefore the size of their forelegs and what would be an appropriate insect that would be comfortable for them to hang - if the insect is too large they usually get scared of it and run away but they also do that when they're just not hungry they often will not eat a couple days before they molt so if you add a cricket into a large praying mantis enclosure that isn't quite an adult and it doesn't want to eat it don't leave the cricket in there because if the mat just doesn't want to molt and it sheds its skin and it has that new soft skin and the cricket might actually start chewing on the Mantis and kill it so if your man just doesn't want to eat a larger insect that is the right size for it take it out and try again later baby preying mantises are usually only large enough to eat fruit flies some species are so small as nymphs that they can only eat springtails but for the most part the ones that you'll see more commonly available in the pet trade are going to at least be big enough for fruit flies there are two commonly found fruit flies in the pet trade and they are typically bred to be flightless fruit flies so they are not gonna fly around your house they are kept in a culture those two species are Drosophila melanogaster which is the smaller variety of the fruit fly and Rossa philia high di which is the larger one as you can imagine baby mixes are going to eat the smaller of melanogaster x' and slightly larger ones will eventually upgrade to the high D eyes after the larger high di fruit flies then they are typically big enough for pinhead crickets or very small dubia roaches and then you just increase the size of the crickets or roaches to match the size of the that the Mantis and what it can handle you do not want to feed your Mantis every day though unless it's a little baby babies you can't feed once a day but that's actually detrimental to their health if you feed an adult or even a sub-adult every day as they age you want to cut back how off and you feed them so once every day is babies - once every four days as adults you can usually look at their abdomen and if their abdomen seems pretty deflated they're probably ready for a meal but if it's really large engorged still from its previous meal give it a couple more days let's touch again on humidity in their enclosures because it is so important to have high humidity in there for when they're ready to molt because the one time they have love immunity will be the time they decide to molt so make sure you miss their once a day to keep their substrate moist and then throughout the day it will slowly release the moisture into the air around it again because of high humidity if you start seeing funguses or mold developing remove that right away clean the enclosure not with any chemicals at all because they can be sensitive to that just use hot water to clean their enclosure and really to prevent mold buildup I highly recommend adding springtails to the substrate springtails can commonly be found at reptile specialty stores reptile Expos and you can even find them online if you're trying to figure out whether your Mantis is a boy or a girl just know that you can't tell what sex it is until it is at its fifth instar or until it's L five or older at that age they are big enough to count the segment's in their abdomen all true insects have three main body parts the head the thorax and the abdomen there is an adorable kidsong that covers these three I'll try to find a link to it and put it right here but the abdomen is the largest part of the insect on the end of its body and that contains these segments that you have to count to sex the Mantis females which again when they're l5 rebuff will have six abdominal segments whereas males will have eight of these segments you can sex adults pretty easily just by giving them a quick glance without even counting their abdominal segments males have generally much slimmer bodies and long wings that go past the end of the abdomen whereas females have kind of shorter stockier bodies which with much shorter wings as well also typically females have a wider thorax which is the middle mid section of their body and males usually have a slender thorax but that's what gives them their overall more slender sheep so there's no surprise there males will also tend to be a little bit smaller and they grow slower than females do but again that could just be an individual female not eating a whole lot and therefore grown slower so again you want to look at the other conditions like their body segments and their wings to know for sure if you're looking for a great starter species of praying mantis I recommend either in Arizona like these two or a Carolina mantis or a Chinese mantis those three are very Hardy species you know all things considered it but keep in mind that even with the most perfect conditions some mantises just they just die I mean they are bugs after all so don't you know blame yourself too much if you know the conditions are right and your bug just dies out of the blue usually they'll pass away because of improper moles and that could be a husbandry issue or could just be the insect in bad luck some people consider it a challenge to raise a baby nymph praying mantis all the way to adulthood but it's best to get a baby that's already established and at least l4 so like this one's an l4 and then they have a much higher chance of survival into adulthood typically breeders don't sell them though unless they are at least l2 or above not many of them are sold at l1 or fresh babies because that's when you have the highest chance of them dying during that first shed that's pretty much mantis is in a nutshell we're not gonna cover breeding in this episode because we're still trying to get the knack of that ourselves we have our pair of Arizona mantises here this is the male and we've got the female over here when she moult's and becomes an adult so we are going to try to pair them up and produce our own babies but this little ghost is just gonna be our pet because I loved her no it's a boy isn't it we had to get him because his name was Edna like Edie Edie mode but that pretty much covers the basics and what you need to know to properly take care of a healthy happy praying mantis now of course let me know which one is your favorite the Arizona Mantis or the ghost mantis because if I include an orchid mantis is in the mix everyone a choose orchid I'm sure so choose between these two let me know which one's your favorite and we'll see you next time No you're not gonna go over to the other bug go right back in there we don't need you guys eating each other in fact you can look that way you know what you too you can also face this way so you're not tempted to eat the ghost head thorax abdomen abdomen oh shoot Shane's getting into the bugs that's good fee footage some people do a lot of people call on mantises or man tips see when I call the mantids I get corrected and they're like no you should call it mantises and I'm like you can call him either one tomato tomahto okay it's box for dictionaries mantis or mantises so not mantids yes they're both eggs that didn't hold myself yeah I'm gonna redo the ending with a couple in my hands but that pretty much covers the basics and what you need to know to properly take care of a healthy happy band that's right males can fly haha he's not food falls yeah males males can fly females can't fly males are able to that's why they have such long wings cuz they find the females by being able to fly to them whereas females just kind of have to wait for the males to arrive but I don't want you flying on the ghosts and eating ham you can just go back there [Music]

Channel: Snake Discovery

Views: 673,117

Keywords: praying mantis, how to care for praying mantis, how to take care of, praying mantis care, praying mantises, ghost mantis, phylocrania paradoxa, pet praying mantis, ghost praying mantis, arizona praying mantis, caring for mantises, praying mantid, praying mantids

Id: t-wSHdvudpw

Length: 14min 16sec (856 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 13 2018