We recently had an amazing experience! We got to watch a whole egg sack of at least 50 baby praying mantises hatch :D They crawled out of the egg sack and we all checked on them in awe over the morning; they literally must have been growing before our eyes! In the evening they were WAYYY darker and bigger than in the morning! (Maybe it was all those flightless fruit flies and bugs and spiders that we were feeding them :-) )
They can eat anything that is smaller than themselves. When they get bigger they can even eat hummingbirds! (No way, I couldn't handle feeding them that either :-( )
We hope that you enjoy these pictures, taken about 5 minutes after they had hatched and while they were hatching. ;-)
Mom was the only one who would brave sticking her hand into the icky, slimy mass of blue ooze that contained the food for our hungry little mantises. (Probably because she grew up with brothers with snakes and other slimy critters ;) )
Nobody can keep a straight face on when we ask them for 'flightless fruit flies'. :P They always start cracking up, many clearing their throats and asking Dad to repeat it, hoping he'll say something like 'fruitless flight [or fright] flies' :) He's a good sport ;-)
Okay, so I HAVE to end this post with the above pictures! They are so cute ;-) Tert said that the first picture is one of a praying mantis with 'someone touching it'! I enlarged the 'someone touching it' so you can see it better ;-)I don't know what it is about 4 year old's pictures... :-)
By: Stella
Age: 12
Praying Mantises Galore
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