Mating
The first step to witnessing a full life cycle is to sex your mantids for breeding by inspecting their abdomen – males have eight segments on the abdomen’s underside versus six for the female. When mating these insects you need to hope for the best because sometimes the female’s carnivorous instincts override her sexual urges and she eats the male.

A good idea is to stand at the tank and keep watch during the mating, and separate if it looks like the female will attack. Another tip is to feed the female prior to putting the male in so that she is distracted.

Eggs
One thing to watch out for is that even if your mantis lays eggs they may not give rise to young, as unmated females also lay eggs that simply don’t hatch.

The females lay several egg cases known as oothecae, with each case usually having up to 200 eggs. The oothecae is a rich liquid and will be laid within two weeks of mating, some time as early as a day after the event.

The eggs hatch to four to six week later to reveal gnat-sized mantids, that will embark on the moulting process. It’s not uncommon for siblings to feast on one another as a first meal.

Metamorphosis
The praying mantis metamorphosis is one of hemimetabolism. This means that the larvae differ markedly from the adults only in terms of size, and development of larva proceeds in repeated stages of growth and moulting. Each stage of growth is known as an instar.

This moulting process is one of the most interesting parts of the praying mantis life cycle. The exoskeleton is shed to allow further growth a number of times as each instar adds segments and increases the body’s size. Instars reach an end once the mantid has developed wings.

Your mantid will molt fortnightly, and it is important not to disturb the mantis during moulting.

Caring for your praying mantis
A praying mantis is a pretty simple insect to care for. They like to have something to climb on, and plenty of live food. A vivarium of around 18 inches in height should be adequate for most species.

A temperature of around 24 degrees should be maintained with the use of spot lights or heating pads. Another way to maintain the 60% humidity that the mantis likes is to use a moisture-retaining soil substrate. In addition to this a shallow water dish should be provided.

The mantis is most common in the tropics, but they are also found in the United State and Europe. The Praying Mantis was actually introduced to the United States to help control pests, but it is now so common it is considered native. The species that was introduced was the European Mantis religiosa and the Chinese species Tenodera aridifolia sinensis.

Taxonomy
There are over 2000 species of mantids, classified by taxonomists as below:

• Kingdom, Animal
• Phylum, Arthropoda
• Class, Insecta
• Order, Dictyoptera
• Family, Mantidae
• Genus, Stagomantis

Some notable species include the Orchid Mantis (Hymenopus coronatus) which is the same pretty pink as an orchid, the Tenodera which is a full six inches in adulthood, and the tiny Bolbe pygmaea that grows to just one centimeter.
The term mantid refers to members of the order Mantodea, and the term Mantis refers to members of the genus Mantis within Mantodea. However, the terms mantis and mantids are used interchangeably, and the term praying mantis is often used by people referring to mantids.

Appearance
The full range of mantis size is from 2/5 of an inch to an imposing 12 inches. In terms of coloring you will see pink, green, and brown mantids, and everything in between as each mantis has developed to blend in with its environment and evade predators such as birds.

The praying mantis is the only insect capable of rotating its head by 180 degrees, and this combined with very keen eyesight are used to observe both predators and prey. Incredibly the mantis’ powerful vision extends over 50 feet. And as if this wasn’t enough they also have hearing abilities that exceed the upper limit of human hearing.
Some mantises have a hollow body, and it is speculated that this is useful in the detection of predators.

Praying Mantis Food
Watching your mantis feast on crickets and aphids you will soon realize that this animal is a voracious carnivore. When kept as pets they need to be housed separately or you will find their population rapidly dwindling.

Recommended food for young mantids is aphids or fruit flies, with the adults graduating to flies, butterflies and crickets. In the wild their diet is more varied with some species even eating small hummingbirds, frogs, lizards, and mice.

You will observe that the mantis makes use of the sharp spikes running along its front legs when it grasps its prey, and if you look carefully you will see a pretty sharp hook at the end of the leg which comes in handy when the mantis skewers the neck of its victims.

After you have put a couple of crickets in your mantis’s vivarium you will see the mantis become still as it goes into stealth mode ready to pluck the prey using its forelegs. The mantis will paralyze the crickets by biting their necks.

In addition to keeping your cannibalistic mantises separate another tip is not to introduce too much food into the vivarium at once as this can tire the mantis out.