Seven mantids have emerged from the first of our oothecae to hatch. As an auspicious number and since they're incredibly smart, I labeled each of their tubes with their new names: Ender, Valentine, Bean, Petra, Han Tzu (Hot Soup), Crazy Tom, and Fly Molo. The next several will be named Alai, Shen, Arkanian, Dink Meeker, Carn Carby, Dumper, Vlad and Nikolai. Give yourself a cookie if you get the literary reference.
A few pictures of our bouncing baby mantids:
Two mantids dangling from the hatching ootheca.
A freshly hatched mantid (likely female, based on the width of its thorax) on the side of the tank, backlit by a flashlight. (For scale, that green cut side of glass along the right border of the image is about 1/8" thick.)
A few pictures of our bouncing baby mantids:
Two mantids dangling from the hatching ootheca.
A freshly hatched mantid (likely female, based on the width of its thorax) on the side of the tank, backlit by a flashlight. (For scale, that green cut side of glass along the right border of the image is about 1/8" thick.)
- Current Mood:
pleased - Current Music:[TV] M*A*S*H
Profile
oddharmonic- Melissa, starry-eyed soy-lovin' Expatriated Zulu
Comments
That usericon is too cute!
Really cool buggies though!
The first seven mantids we put in tubes have practically doubled in size after drinking and eating. Aside from the wait for them to hatch, this has to be one of the cooler science projects we've had in the house.
But they eat wingless fruit flies, which is perversely fun to watch.