Pet Orchid Mantis Care Sheet Hymenopus coronatus Kung Fu Mantid #orchidmantis #petmantises #mantis

so here we are these orchid mantises got a mail right there in the middle of the flower and up here a surprise just a surprise because it's blending in so perfectly this female so much larger than the male but a surprise for you rest this is yours this female sending it to you really enjoyed collaborating with you on this video about working mantises everybody please go and check out Russ's aquarium x pets youtube channel to see my interview about these magical creatures camouflage many animals like this leafy sea dragon use camouflage either to hide from their predators or to in the case of this orchid mantis attract them and it was long believed that these orchid mantises mimicked orchids for hundreds of years it was thought that but in 2014 a team of scientists including O'Hanlon her Burstein and hall well determined that they more generally have evolved to look like flowers not any specific kind of flower but to the pollinators that they prey on they resemble yes this insect is flying very quickly to and fro from flower to flower the orchid mantises look very much like a flower in their eyes and so these pollinators will come right up to the orchid mantis which is of course just waitin to snatch them right out of the air and feed on them very effective strategy another animal this leafy sea dragon here uses its camouflage to hide from predators but these orchid mantises use a strategy called aggressive mimicry to air the prey items come close to them beautiful animals and we're going to explore them in today's video from beginning to end we're going to look at the entire life cycle from an egg the egg case is also called Oh a Thika that's the singular Oh a these-- is the plural - the nymphs including the first instar hatchlings which are red and black first in stars refers to brand-new baby mantises that have just hatched out of their egg cases after they shed their skin the first time they are considered second instar interesting thing happened today this video is about Orkut mantises and ghost mantises two of the most spectacular species in the pet hobby and today we have hatchlings of both species and one incubation container got quite a few egg cases up there on the top and both hatched here within the last 24 hours The Orchid mantises are the pretty little black and red ones and the ghost mantises have that little horn on the head just like the adults pink and white so curious people always enjoy watching the on hand feeding demonstrations seems like it's taken forever for this Orkut to bloom but it's finally happening these beautiful white flowers oh just a little out-of-focus sorry so very pink they get this way when they're approaching a molt you can see that her wing buds are thickened she still has a few more days but she'll be even darker tomorrow she's right on the camera so in the last couple Clips you saw slightly older and older mantises each time they shed their skin they come out a little bit larger and that's how they grow they have exoskeletons and so their structural system unlike ours or bones on the insides of our bodies there's is on the outside and in the next clip I want to give you guys a little bit of a heads up it's pretty graphic you will see a blue bottle fly that is being eaten by a probably fifth instar female orchid mantis and it's still alive and the Mantis is actively consuming it while it's moving if you are sensitive to that sort of thing I do encourage you to skip ahead a few minutes to a later portion of the video I don't orchid mantis they're poking out from behind its prey just shut its skin yesterday and just having its first meal since then take it in a little closer for you here they do enjoy living prey going to pop a magnifier attachment on here so we can take an even closer look the eyes and the mandibles this is the mouth of an orchid matches and you see it has at this point remove the head of its prey a blue bottle fly in the next couple of Clips we take a look at the breeding of orchid mantises the main reason why orchid mantises are not very common in the hobby is because of breeding breeding in the species is particularly difficult for several reasons first of all they are difficult to acquire they are also very expensive if you do happen to have an opportunity to find any for pets and then the males mature much more quickly than the females do which if you start out with say a group of five of them you'll find that your males mature months sooner than your females and the males being shorter lived will often die out before your females are ready many people believe that inbreeding is an issue with this species that may or may not be true typically I think the main bottleneck is not having enough of them in your breeding group in addition to not being able to usually source them on a moment's notice from another breeder when your females are ready but your males are long gone another reason why they are difficult to breed you will see in the next few Clips how much smaller the males are than the females and the females in many mantis species are highly aggressive towards most anything that moves near them and that is of a size that they might consider as prey I am NOT myself on the menu obviously but a small male orchid mantis they fly extremely well and they are very good at evading the females they'll jump up on their backs and find this sort of safety zone where the females can't turn around and grab them and they'll rest there for a moment and they will drum on the of the female to show their interest in her she can't reach them usually when they're first starting out because they're in sort of a blind spot for her but if they gauge that she's receptive they will slowly move down into a much more vulnerable position because her abdomen is up and under her wings and because they need to slide back down and curl their abdomen around and underneath to touch ends basically keeping this family friendly the male finds himself in a very vulnerable position when he's back there and if the female changes her mind about the ordeal she can at any time turn around and grab him and make a meal of him and in nature males are quite plentiful and because they do fly so well they will often come around rather often and the females will decide whether they're in the mood for breeding or lunch fruit fly courtship you can see presumably to be males chasing the females it's happening down here too with these orchid mattresses this is a mating pair of orchid mantises you can see that the female is considerably larger than the male not too happy about this took my eye off the ball for just a few minutes the male was perfectly positioned right on her back I just threw up a little story here on Instagram telling you guys about the spiny flower mantis is that I was going to breed today and how I had to be excessively careful with them because it was my only male this forked male was my best breeder I believe he fertilized a number of females this particular female here her cup lid had said attacker on it because on May 16th I don't know ten days or so ago she attacked a male but I was able to save him not this one she's eating his head right now if he's interested in her he will drum there with his front legs on her back sort of a signal to her that he's interested in mating with her and as he drums you will often move just a little bit positioning his body closer and closer so that the tip of his abdomen is leaning up and around to touch the tip of hers and so her large wings are in the way at this moment and he'll have to position himself slowly without bothering her too much there you saw the drumming and usually they will move just slightly around the time that they drum and I think they gained some confidence each time they do it too when they drum and then she doesn't stop what she's doing turn around and rip him off her back and make a meal of them so we'll check up on this one again in a little while to see if he hasn't found himself in a better position well good news these two have been steadily mating now for about two hours and gonna feed her up get her nice and big and hope that she produces that egg case here very soon everybody's always asking for updates about the orchid mantises here you go maybe she was discarding the mail spermatophore but now there's another clump probably just poop not cool not cool I know sorry about that today is my birthday and we have a bit of a Christmas miracle here this was one of my two egg-bound female orchid mantises and I could see that she was looking a bit skinnier and there is the reason why a good size to a case very happy about that this lady here was fertilized sooner but they've both been fertilized for about two plus months now happy birthday to me and that's came over right there the orchid mantis sometimes called the pink orchid mantis specimens can be quite pink they're generally white but as they approach a molt they will sometimes pink up quite a bit and then for a few weeks at a minimum before the molt they'll be very pink and then shortly after the molt they will be slightly pink in then the white much of the time you can see the green what I call a necklace on this specimen and that's a sign that she is a female at this instar which i think is probably fourth instar if this were a male not only would that necklace be sort of a brownish red color the wing buds would also be quite evident I'm going to zoom in a little bit here I was quite fascinating to watch them feeding if a little bit disturbing to watch the living fly being consumed by its predator take this opportunity to also illustrate how to sex mantises do you see where the back pair of legs connects they're actually to the thorax and just before the abdomen starts insects have three body parts the head which is rather obvious connects to the thorax they're in the middle where all three pairs of legs insects have six legs attached to the thorax and then the abdomen there as this mantis consumes this fly you can actually see sort of through the translucent body of this mantis as it feeds the dark contents of its meal going down through the middle of its body and will end up there in the abdomen now female mantises will zoom in a little bit more here female mantises have six abdominal segments and males have eight and so you can see a sort of upside down triangular segment they're just back behind where the legs attach to the thorax that would be the first segment to count and just above it the second segment there's a little black speck of debris there on the third segment the fourth segment just below the reddish band there and then the fifth segment or it above that and then right at the top another triangular section that's the sixth segment here in this orchid mantis I apologize for the shakiness here at this magnification it's hard to hold my hand still when I'm free handing this I have the Mantis on my left hand and I'm holding the camera as still as I can the camera being my iPhone here in my right hand and there's a juicy bit for you right there another interesting thing to point out you will note that the eyes of this Mantis are somewhat pinkish at nighttime their eyes actually darken and I don't know if this is true or not but because they dark and I have always suspected that it helps them to see at night may be comparable in some way to the way the pupils and our eyes dilate to let more light in so that we can see better in dim conditions see also the spiky forelegs their mantises predators and they are designed very and very perfectly for the task another thing to point out here you see that this abdomen it's somewhat plump it could actually probably be maybe I don't know another third as thick as it is I would guess that this mantis could probably consume three more flies before it decided to pass on the next one and we'll see if I have another example here so you can see that this second instar mantis is considerably smaller then its fourth or fifth instar counterpart here I would typically feed these smaller ones with fruit flies whereas these larger ones were feeding house flies at this time now you can feed them pet store crickets small pet store crickets and of course you'll need crickets that are pinheads or one week or two week occurred for the smaller ones but many people in the hobby will advise you that feeding crickets to your mantises is always a little bit risky because sometimes crickets will make your mantis is sick and produce what obvious and scientists alike call the brown goo of death and it's believed that it's a bacterial infection that is passed from crickets to mantises many people find that if they purchase crickets from the pet store and then feed them a healthy diet for a while fruits vegetables maybe some dog food or other kinds of pet foods that that will sort of flush the systems of the crickets and make them healthy enough to feed to mantises but always a little bit of a risk and certainly their response their feeding response is better to flying prey than it ever is to crawling prey although ghost mantises they're rather good when it comes to feeding they're quite aggressive ghost mantises are much pickier as our Devils flowers when it comes to their preference for flying prey over crawling prey hey if you like me give me one of those thumbs up and please subscribe and hit the little bell so you know when I post next please share me with your friends on social media thank you for watching

Channel: Bugs In Cyberspace

Views: 40,381

Keywords: orchid mantis, pet orchid mantis, Hymenopus coronatus, pink orchid mantis, orchid mantid, orchid mantis care sheet, orchid mantis how to, Hymenopus coronatus care, orchid mantis eating, kung fu mantis, mantid care, mantis care, pet mantis care sheet, pet mantises, breeding orchid mantises, orchid mantis breeding, pet kung fu mantis, mantid care sheet, flower mantis, orchid mantis pets, orchid praying mantis, mantis that looks like a flower, pet orchid mantises, mimicry

Id: TVjFtrO2DTA

Length: 23min 22sec (1402 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 19 2020