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Photo#168208
Mantid - Stagmomantis limbata

Mantid - Stagmomantis limbata
Chinle, Apache County, Arizona, USA
February 3, 2008
Size: ~ 1 cm +/-
No idea where this little guy came from. I have some "bottle biology" projects going, and maybe (s)he came from one of them, but I never saw an egg mass. Do single eggs ever get laid? It seems way too cold outside for mantids to be hatching. It seemed to like the little piece of chicken I fed it. I'm a little short on flies at the moment, but maybe I can let some bananas ripen and catch some fruit flies to feed it.

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Mantid - Stagmomantis limbata Mantid - Stagmomantis limbata

Moved
Moved from Mantids.

Moved
Moved from Mantids.

In my experience, the Mantode
In my experience, the Mantodea don't lay singular eggs. They are laid in a mass called an ootheca where there are, maybe, hundreds of eggs. Usually I get around 60-80 hatch from wild ootheca's that I happen upon and keep track of. In Maryland, I've only found them to hatch in late May to mid June, depending on the weather; certainly not this early in the year.

 
Me too!
The only other time I've ever had a winter hatch was when another teacher had brought an egg case in to my biology class one fall about 30 years ago, and they all hatched over the Christmas break. When we returned after the new year there were about a dozen left, all about an inch long. The survivors had eaten the rest. But this one just showed up in my kitchen yesterday, and I haven't seen any more. I fed earthworms and mealworms to that dozen, and they did fine. This one is so tiny though! It would surely die if I put it outside in the snow!

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