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.
¶
Posted 01 December 2006
§
‡
°
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.
¶
Posted 21 November 2006
§
‡
°
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.”
¶
Posted 29 October 2006
§
‡
°
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.
¶
Posted 29 September 2006
§
‡
°
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.
¶
Posted 04 September 2006
§
‡
°
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.
¶
Posted 19 August 2006
§
‡
°
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.
Bug Love submissions
I ran across your site as I was attempting to identify a fierce looking flying insect that I hadn’t seen before. Thanks to your site, I’ve identified him, and his 10,000 friends as “Robber Flies”. As I was taking a picture to submit, a couple of the rascals saw the camera and thought they would try out for “Bug Love”. I thought it was a little unusual, because all the other pictures I’ve seen of them mating was tail-to-tail, unlike these two exhibitionists. I’ve also included a shot I took last year of a couple of Mantids. I had about 3 of them which I kept as “free range” pets. I guess they liked it here, because they stayed all season. Enjoy!
Jeff King
Krum, TX
Hi Jeff,
What wonderful images you have provided for our readers.
Dear Bugman,
My daughter found a cocoon-looking thing attached to some twigs this past winter. She brought it in and I pinned it to our bulletin board. I homeschool here in Michigan and thought it would be interesting to see if something "hatched" from it. Well, this morning we found tiny bugs that looked like miniature preying mantises on the cocoon. We were wondering what we should do with them now. It is still pretty cold here at night and the temperature only reaches the low 60’s on nice days. Is it too cold for them out side? Can we keep them indoors and wait till it gets warmer? What should we feed them?
The Tripp family
Hi Tripps,
Your newly hatched Mantids are a treat. They will begin to eat each other if they don’t have room to escape. If it is not freezing, you should release them.
¶
Posted 05 May 2006
§
‡
°
what’s this?
we found this in the corner of our fence, and I am assuming it’s some kind of cocoon, since there isn’t any opening. I have been searching the net for moths in oregon, to see if I could find a picture of it, but I have had no luck. Do you know what it could be? It looks like layers of paper, but there isn’t any opening, so I know it’s not a wasp.
ali in oregon
Hi Ali,
This is a Preying Mantis Egg Case, known as an Oothica. It will hatch into several hundred baby mantids.
¶
Posted 04 May 2006
§
‡
°
rss
