For ALL the Mantis practitioners

[The Willow Sword]

found this little guy on the dirt road where i live. Enjoy.

Many Respects, the willow sword

[PaulLin]

Hope you can rise it big enough to see the advanced mantis fighting skills Feed it any bugs yet?

[NorthernMantis]

lol true. Have you witnessed it streetfight yet? My si hing got one a while back and we called it the master. Unfortunately my si hing got's too many pets so he let the master on it's way.

[TaiChiStorm]

I have got one ,too!!! She was still a baby when I bought it and now she has grown up to 5cm. I love watching her catching the bees and stuff. NM, it's so great that you called yours "Master"!! This is true!! It must be the GRAND GRAND MASTER for all the PMs!!!
By the way ,the one on the photo seems to be a male!! They are much smaller than the females, and normally, the female eats the male after the sex!!

[The Willow Sword]

was fun to play around with but alas i let him go. besides there are tons of em out where i live. THAT particular one caught my attention as i almost stepped on him. Notice the red on him. i have never seen red on a mantis before.

Many Respects,,The Willow Sword

[TaoBoy]

We had a resident mantis at our home. We used to get home and it would be sitting near the front door. My girlfriend and I both do SPM so it was kinda cool. Haven't seen any others around before - it just appeared outta nowhere.

[NPMantis]

Ahh, it's so cute! (Watch out for its joint locks and insane mantis form though.)

[Former castleva]

Where I live they are pretty small,sometimes though they may get a bit scary for being freakily big relatively,don´t wanna touch those rare ones...But they are other type of mantises,not praying I think.They jump pretty well.
They are "rusty" looking,brown,sometimes maybe some other ones exist.And they make a LOT of noise.
Just a sidenote.

[Frogman]

I recently found a PM hanging out on a truck tire in the parking lot at work. At first I did not know what it was just some green thing. As I approached it turned and squared off at me, then started weaving back and forth as to elude me. I was quite impressed that this 6” bug was totally willing to take on a full growing man, so I got a box and captured the little guy. The hardest part was that I did not want to hurt the little bugger since it had no problem putting up a fight. In the end my drop box over bug technique was successful in nabbing the ultimate grand mater of PM KF. I took my new found friend to the school and it just hung out in the box (which, I covered with clear plastic so it could see out and we in). When I finished my work out I took the little guy out back and released it in a bamboo tree. It seemed to be much calmer then when we first met, and just climbed out of the box into the tree. With in seconds it disappeared in the leaves and was very difficult to see. I have not seen my friend since then but am sure it made good use of it new surroundings.

Buggen

fm

[GeneChing]

Kevin73's post on the Preserved Mantis thread I started two days ago got me thinking...

Who else here has kept mantids?

That is very cool.

My dad brought home a praying mantis from work to me when I was a child to see before we let it go in the yard. I have loved them ever since. Just saw one in the backyard yesterday on the fence and watched it for awhile.

I ttt-ed this old thread because it popped when I searched pets.

I kept a mantis when I was in elementary school. My dad caught it on a nearby golf course. Back in those days, the Silicon Valley had more orchards and open spaces, so large insects like mantids & jerusalem crickets were common. My memory paints it as large, like 3-4 inches, but I was a kid. We kept in a terrarium that my mom made when her hobby was stained glass. We had a huge Golden Delicious apple tree and I used to catch flies there every day because there were fallen apples that attracted them. I think I kept that mantis alive for a few months, until the fall, when it died. That was before I studied any mantis style. I just was into cool bugs as a kid.

On a lark, I bought one of those mantis eggs at a Fremont nursery over a decade ago and did everything it said to do. They did hatch, or at least there was a hole in it later, but I never saw any. Maybe a bird ate them or something.