In about a week, 4 have hatched. We started this science project with low expectations since the egg cases looked overly dry and lifeless. But yesterday we noticed movement in the netted habitat on the sides with tiny stringy legs hanging onto the sides.

We’ll release them into the wild soon or else they’ll start eating each other. Praying mantises only eat meat and, according to Google, lunch meat won’t suffice. They main diet includes butterflies, flies, and crickets: the latter we can purchase at Petsmart but that’s a whole lot of trouble to get and to carefully release the crickets into the habitat without letting any of them loose in the house.

The enclosed pamphlet estimates 75-200 nymphs per egg: we have 2 egg cases and 4 hatched. Many more to come hopefully!

Categories: learning with kids nature

Tagged as: hatched no lunch meat praying mantis

singlikewildflowers

Welcome to my blog! My name is Esther and I'm so happy you are here. I'm an avid nature photographer and a daydreaming thinker. My posts revolve around photos of nature's beauty, homeschooling adventures with my 2 kids, sporadic reflections on my child's heart condition, Bible reading reflections, gardening feats, and other mish mash things. Hopefully you'll leave encouraged, pensive, or smiling at the simple things of life. Thank you for stopping by and hope you'll find some interesting posts to read!