After about a month my class and I released most of the mantids in the garden behind school, before they started fighting for resources. There was just too many of them in a small space. We named our only mantis left, Bob. For the first 6 weeks or so we fed Bob 5 or 6 tiny fruit flies every couple of days. By the end of May I was catching large flies for him. Through out the summer I would feed him 3 or 4 large flies every two days. My wife even bought me a fly catching "gun" for fathers day, it would suck the flies up in to a chamber. Bob would hang patiently upside down and strike like lightening whenever a fly flew or crawled by. Those flies just weren't that smart.
Bob molted (shed his skin) about 10 times during the summer. Sometimes he would eat his old skin and sometimes I grabbed it out of his habitat to look at it. In late July, Bob molted for the last time. We had been researching Mantis Religiosa and discovered that after his last molt Bob would have wings and become more aggressive. That was true! He developed beautiful blue-green wings and he would try to attack any movement near his habitat. These physical characteristics and behavior traits helped us identify him as a male (we had just guessed!) After taking him out for the pictures we had a very difficult time getting him back in, he was MEAN! Our research also showed that Bob would soon die if we left him in captivity, so during the hot days of late July, I brought him here to the gardens of Gilbert where I hoped he would be able to catch some insects and find a mate.
Look closely, he's got a fly!
