How to Care for a Young Praying Mantis

A praying mantis is a truly unique and interesting insect that is easy to have as a pet. Besides being unique pets, praying mantis are also great additions to your garden as insect control and are often sold in bulk for use in your home garden. Worried about taking care of one? Since kids do well taking care of a praying mantis, then you will have no problem taking care of your own if you just follow a couple of simple steps.

Things You'll Need

• Praying mantis
• Small insect habitat

Instructions

1. It's not very often that you'll find a praying mantis available for sale in a pet store. However, almost anytime you go for a walk, you might run across one. If you are unable to find one in nature, it's quite simple to buy them online (see Resources).

2. Before your mantids arrive, prepare a home for them. A praying mantis does not need a lot of room to survive. A basic insect habitat that you can find even at your local superstore will be quite sufficient for your new pet. If you plan to have more than one praying mantis, keep in mind that you will need to keep them separate as there is a possibility that they could kill each other.

3. Gather material for the inside your habitat. Pick a substrate (the stuff you put in the bottom of the tank). Try a sand/soil mix for a praying mantis. You will also need to put in a couple twigs. The twigs need to be tall enough to allow the praying mantis to hang from them and molt. You can put in other plants and things for show, but just make sure to not overcrowd the tank.

4. The praying mantis is pretty sensitive to temperature so keep the tank between 70 and 80 degrees Fahrenheit. If you need to, you can use a trick that most reptile owners use and put a heating pad under half of the tank. Having the heat source on only half your tank allows the praying mantis the option to move to a less heated area to temperature regulate itself.

5. Learn how to feed and water a praying mantis. A praying mantis will not usually drink directly from a water dish, so having one in the tank is just a sure fire way to help your pet drown. The best thing to do is just periodically mist the tank with a spray bottle since most mantids obtain their water from dew droplets on plants. As for food, it depends on the size of the praying mantis. For smaller mantids, fruit flies, aphids and regular house flies are great food source for them. For larger mantids, you can feed them moths and even crickets periodically. If you are trying to breed your mantids, you may want to feed their prey with vitamin enriched food so that when the mantids eat them, those nutrients will be passed on to your praying mantis.

6. Now you're ready to house and take care of a praying mantis. Have fun enjoying this incredible creature of nature.

Tips & Warnings

• Be careful in how often you mist your tank. If you mist too often, the humidity will become too high for your mantid to survive comfortably.

• Make sure and check your local laws before buying a praying mantis. Some species are prohibited depending on where you live. If you happen to find one in the wild, unless you found it in another state than your own, you should be ok.

Resources

• Live Mantis