Saturday, March 07, 2009

Praying mantis update

We are down to two praying mantises after the natural processes of the weak, small ones dying off during food competition and after two incidents of major body trauma (Abigail felt possessed to turn their habitat upside down once and David inadvertently knocked it over a few days later). However, the two we have seem to be doing great. The bigger one just went through his first visible molt and it was so neat! He is now about an inch long and starting to turn the green color of an adult mantis ( he is sitting on the upper branch in the picture below). We didn't actually get to see him shed his old exoskeleton, but in the morning, we found it lying on the floor. Not sure how well you can see it in the picture, but it's in the bottom right corner just above the branch; it looks like a ghost figure of a praying mantis. Below is the smaller mantis on the hunt. You can see the fruit fly just ahead of the mantis (the dark thing on the left is a piece of leaf).

1 comment:

Delighted Hands said...

Oh, it is nice to 'meet' them again! Glad you have a couple who are thriving-great Science project!