Ootheca hatching
Hello Sir,
That’s wonderful what Lisa and Daniel from SHIRTSOFBAMBOO.COM did for WHATSTHATBUG.COM. They’re very kind and generous people to have donated the additional bandwidth. I send my heartfelt gratitude to Lisa and Daniel! Here are a couple of images I took of a Southern Carolina Mantid ootheca while the nymphs were emerging. I hope you can use these images to help promote the fascinating world of bugs. Thank you for one of the best bug websites on the net! Sincerely,
Troy D. (Keyser, WV)
Hi Troy,
We are really indebted to Lisa and Daniel. Thanks for your great Oothica image.
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Posted 16 February 2007
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bugs of course!
Hi again,
You may remember me from my Christmas time request at identifying my cute little pie dish beetle? But I know how busy you are so I won’t be offended if you’ve forgotten me and my beetle by now – much!. Anyway the reason I’m bugging you (pardon the pun) is that since Christmas I’ve been lucky enough to have travelled right across our wide brown land all the way from Perth to Tasmania and as a direct result of that journey have two pics and one question for you. First I want to say that thanks to your wonderful website I was able to positively identify an egg case that had been carefully attached to our spare car tyre, which had to be transported in our pop up camper due to lack of space elsewhere, as belonging to a preying mantis. Thus their lives were spared as my husband had thought it was some kind of spider egg and was about to crush it. It was not until our trip was underway that it was discovered and as my hubby has a bit of a soft spot for preying mantis he was careful with it from then on. After crossing the Eyre Peninsula in 47c heat, I had a good idea that might trigger an hatching, and so it did, as two evenings later we popped up our camper to find hundreds of tiny preying mantis running about all over our stuff. We carefully removed them from the camper and left the remaining ones to hatch outside. In the morning we carefully removed the egg case and left them to battle against the funnel web spiders which were, unfortunately for them, abundant in that area. Hopefully they already had that species of preying mantis in Victoria, if not- well… they have now. Anyway to make a long story short, I took a pic of the hatch-lings that I thought you might like. The question I have is about the other picture, which I assume are assassin beetles obviously mating. Please correct me if I’m wrong about my identification. These bugs were photographed in Tasmania and many more were found all over town mating merrily. My mother, who lives there, told me that once these bugs couple, they cannot dis-attach, and so the bigger one, presumably the female? drags the little one presumably the male? around until he dies, and then what I don’t know? (not unlike some human marriages I believe) Anyway, I found this information a little hard to swallow, and although I hate to question my mum, I’d really like to know if this is so? Can you verify that for me? Well that’s if from me for now… hope to hear from you when you get time. Kind regards,
Jill Hardman
Western Australia
Dear Jill,
Thank you for the wonderful letter. You hatching Mantid Oothica and accompanying details are fascinating. Your alleged Assassin Bugs are Hemipterans, which includes the Assassin Bugs, predatory species in the family Reduviidae, but they are a different family, possibly Lygaeidae, the Seed Bugs. Most definitely, they are a phytophagous or plant eating species.
Millie the Mantis
Hey Bugman,
Just a short note to say.. I just lost a great gift.. My Preying Mantis..Named her Millie.. she laid 4 egg sacks in captivity and 2 outside in (Sept. early Oct.) took her in in 1st week of Oct. Can’t believe I cried all day over a bug but “Millie” had such a personality… She loved to walk all over me.. waited for me in the morning to take her out of the aquarium to sit in the window and watch the birds..She loved to be hand fed crickets and grasshoppers.. Anyway found your sight and enjoyed finding out what is going to happen with all 6 of these egg sacks.. I’m broken hearted about “Millie the Mantis” but like Charlottes Web she will send her offspring in the spring!!!… information on Millie.. she was 4 3/4 inches long …and from Rockford, Illinois…when buying crickets for Millie.. the clerks at 2 different Petstores said they also had friends that had Preying Mantis’s I was told they don’t usually hang out in Northern Illinois but thought they came up with violent storms in spring of 2006???? No idea but glad they are here… Thanks again for a great Web sight..
Barb Key
Rockford, Illinois
Hi Barb,
Thank you for your touching account of the life of Millie the Mantis. Millie was a Chinese Mantis, Tenodera aridifolia sinensis, and the introduced species is widely distributed in the U.S. due to the commercial availability of egg cases or oothica.
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Posted 06 January 2007
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Praying Mantid
Hey! I’m Kim (15 yrs) from Australia, NSW Wagga Wagga, and I was looking through bug identification sites, and yours is way the best! My Mum knows I’m nuts about insects and she found me this praying mantis in our outside cat’s basket on the pillow. I have never seen anything like this one before, maybe it’s using this as a disguise to be like an ant or a spider? Maybe it eats fleas? It also does this very weird yet interesting thing with it’s fore-legs, it does this circular motion with both arms a little apart doing it at the same time. Here’s a couple of photos of him. Sorry if they are not very clear, my digital camera does not have a macro lense, and she (or he, though I think it’s a she) won’t stop moving! It is 1.3 centimetres long, and the abdomen is approximetly 4mm at it’s largest point. Hope you can identify it! Thanks!
From Kim
Hi Kim,
Thanks for the compliment. Because your letter was so nice, we have been obsessed with properly identifying your Boxer Bark Mantid in the genus Paraoxypilus. The Geocities site states: ” The male and female of Boxer Bark Mantid species Paraoxypilus are markedly dissimilar to each other. The male is winged, slender and a little longer in body length. They have the cryptic colours and hard to be seen on bark. They colour patterns may be different for individual. … The Boxer Bark Mantids that we found are wingless, so they should be females (male is winged and with slender body, see below). They have long legs and holding their front pair of legs in ‘boxing’ display as most other praying mantids. Like some other praying mantids, they also have colour patches on their inner forelegs. The Boxer Bark Mantids have the orange ones. It is believed this is a territorial display to space out individuals of the same species. They can be found hunting on the rough bark gum tree trunk. They are usually not moving, but runs very fast when disturbed.” Since your specimen is wingless and not slender, we believe she is female as you presumed. Your description of the foreleg movements also supports the “boxing” description.
Mantis from Madagascar
Hallo,
can anybody identify this Mantis? I found it near Andasibe in Madagaskar.
Thanks
Christian
Hi Christian,
We will post your image of this unidentified Mantis from Madagascar in the hopes that one of our readers can identify it.
I’m writing in response to the “Unidentified Mantis from Madagascar” posted on 12/30/2006. That photo appears to show an African Mantis, or Sphodromantis lineola.
Chris Webb
Here’s my bug
Hello..
It’s a bit bigger than one inch (I think) and I’m in the Tampa Florida Area. Thanks!
Karen Blanco
Hi Karen,
The forshortening on the photo of this Grizzled Mantis is quite disconcerting. The Grizzled Mantis, Gonatista grisea, mimics lichen for camouflage.
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Posted 01 December 2006
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What are these bugs please
Dear Bugman,
I was wondering if you can tell me please, what this little guy is? It was wandering on the patio of our garden in South Africa, about 25miles north of Johannesburg. At first glance I thought that it was a leaf then realised that it might be a sort of Mantis? It remained in the garden for about two hours eventually climbing up onto a wooden table. It is less than two inches long. I have many more photographs of it if need be. Many thanks
Best regards from
Mrs Wendy Tomes
Johannesburg, South Africa
Hi Wendy,
We believe this is a Ghost Mantis, Phyllocrania paradoxa, based on a site we found online.
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Posted 21 November 2006
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identify my bug
Hi, I took this picture of a bug on the outside of my house. I live on the east coast of Florida in Brevard County. I have lived in my house for almost ten years and I have never seen anything like it. Can you tell me what it is? Thank you,
Tori
Hi Tori,
This is a Grizzled Mantis, Gonatista grisea. According to BugGuide the species, which is also known as the Lichen Mimic Mantid, “May be found in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. May also be found in Puerto Rico and Cuba.”
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Posted 29 October 2006
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My Apex pet…
Hello and good day, I just wanted to first say that your site is by far the best for mantis pictures and stories. Bravo! I have two mantis, both female. One of them is a Carolina Mantid and the one in these pics is physically different with its left wing having a spot on it that looks more like a eye. It is a yellow circle with a black spot in the middle. Its only on one side and she doesn’t have a black spot on its chest like my other pet mantids have had. I would appreciate the help. Now with the crazy story, I caught my first mantid of the year early in the summer nearly four months ago, she travels every with us, chilling out in her special travel case. Her name is Superwoman for the unusually large black spot on her chest. She will eat 2 Grasshoppers everyday if I feed her that much but I usually just give her three every two days and she stays pleasantly fat and too heavy to even fly! Believe it or not she has only flown away once and she made it about a foot and just fell and never tried that again. I have had her since the first molt and she went from solid green to dark mottled brown like the sticks I put in her terrarium. But it’s my other mantis, KILLena, that takes the cake as the apex predator in the house. I had three in total, two females and one male, last night I decided to try and mate the newest edition KILLena and a grass type mantis. I put the two of them together and as soon as I did Killena froze into position and starting swaying back and forth as if it were a mating dance. The male mantis, Rosevelt (because I found him in my rosemary herb garden tracking a butterfly), started to move into position for copulation. As it made its way down a stick near KILLena she reached out faster than I had ever seen one ambush its prey, and snatched him up by the head and claws and commenced to eating the head!! I thought they did that that after they copulated but not KILLena!! She then chewed off the front claws and rendered him defenseless, munching on its upper half with one claw and has his mid-section in the other claw. Rosevelt amazingly was still moving! Not just moving but walking around, slightly clumsier but still walking up and down sticks like it knew what was going on. Eventually he made his way to KILLena’s body and jumped on the back and began reproducing!!!! just a fraction of his upper half was left and he was still completing his routine!! In the midst of that she noticed the fresh grasshopper I dropped inside earlier that day and snatched it up as well!! this is how she got the name KILLena, while munching on a grasshopper, after eating the head of her new found mate, she was making babies!! How great is that!! These pics should really explain a few things about mantids as pets and how they work and the order in which they eat their prey. I got quite a few camera angles and she even seemed to pose and smile for to take more, meanwhile not missing a single bite in between snaps of the shutter. Please enjoy these pics and feel free to share them with the world. Ill be updating you guys when she lays the sack and we hatch them. Till then Have a great day and remember, watch where you step, there is a whole ‘nother world beneath your feet!!!!
Proud Parent from Missouri
Dear Proud Parent,
Thank you for the graphic story.
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Posted 29 September 2006
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Tagged: bug love
Pseudocreobotra Wahlbergii
Found in my garden beginning August 2006.Have watched it from small till now.It has not moved for more than a Month from the same Rose plant. Thanks
Andre Smuts
Durban International Airport
Hi Andre,
Thank you for submitting your photo of the beautiful Spiny Flower Mantis from South Africa.
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Posted 04 September 2006
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SAVED from a brutal death
As we left a local shopping mall, we saw a group of teenagers throwing rocks at the wall. As we approached (my wife’s a school teacher, so she’s always ready to stop mischief in its tracks), we realized that the kids were trying to hit a Mantis! We shooed the kids away, emptied the contents of a recent purchase from the box, and transported the Mantis to our garden (we’d prefer to leave bugs where they are, but I’m sure our garden in the country is better than a huge expanse of concrete in the city – especially one with rock-wielding cretins roaming around…). Once in the garden, when I went to take the photo, the Mantis looked back as if to say "thanks!". We are in Northwest Ohio. Enjoy!
Thank you for your wonderful story and sweet photo.
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Posted 19 August 2006
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Mating Mantis
Hi Bugman,
I noticed quite a few mating mantis photos on the site, but didn’t see one like this: the male has been decapitated by the female after mating (yet still attached to the female) – quite gruesome! The photo was taken while the pair were on our butterfly bush in Newcastle, CA. And a follow up to the CA Prionus beetle stridulation. They’ve just recently returned and I was able to harass (gently of course) one to induce that freaky sound! This one got pretty fired up and was rubbing both hind legs vigorously across the sides of its closed outer wings.
Ann
Hi Ann,
Thanks for the awesome addition to our site. The female Preying Mantis is one of those creatures notorious for cannibalizing her mate.
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