Our Pet, the Praying Mantis
by Utkrishta Mulmi
Scientific
name: Mantodea
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Order: Mantodea
Class: Insecta
Pallav sir found a praying
mantis near the Pulchowk Engineering Campus. There is a jungle there and Pallav
sir saw a female praying mantis. Along with different types of insects, there
are snakes, birds including family of parrots, and other animals and insects
there.
We learned it was a female
mantis because they are big and are cannibalistic while male mantises are smaller
and mostly not cannibal. Praying mantis fold their front legs like they are praying.
Their life span is a year.
Of course, because it was
such a fine sample, we decided to keep it as a pet. Over the next five to six
months, we learned a lot. We learned about how they behave, what to feed them,
how to take care of them and more about their lives.
Mantises are
an order of insects that contains more than 2,400 species. Mantises
are insects that can be found all around the world in forest or bushy
places. They have triangular heads with 2 big and 3 small eyes. According to
Amulya Pradhan, our four year old, “I really liked its green eyes and its body
colour. Sometimes its eyes would turn purple.”
Well, not exactly purple,
but like all mantises, they have the ability to adapt to their background and
the eyes would sometimes turn dark and black and sometimes lemon green!
They have a flexible neck
that can turn 180 degrees. Their elongated bodies can have or cannot have wings
but all Mantises have scythe like front legs that are very large and used to
catch its prey.
That evening, because our
ecosystem was not ready, we put it in a cardboard box. Since it had not interacted
with humans it was aggressive, only Pallav sir could hold it and it would still
try and bite him. Whenever we let it out it would fly towards the windows and
we were worried that it would injure itself on the hard glass surface. We kept
them all windows closed.
It was time to go home.
The next morning all of went running to see the praying mantis first thing to
see if it was there, if it was all right. We got out our ecosystem bowl. We had
Amata Hubeneri moths in there before and had successfully though surprisingly
been able to convert the caterpillars into moth (read a different blog on
this).
Now that all the Amata
Hubeneri moths had flown away, the bowl had been empty for a couple of weeks
and it was perfect to create a praying mantis ecosystem there. We filled it
with leaves and twigs for it to move around in. We looked at YouTube videos and
research the ecosystems of the praying mantis and tried to do the best job
possible.
According to our Shila
Shrestha, “We would look for leaves. We would collect avocado leaves and mango
leaves in the playground. We would climb up the play system and on to the roof
of the store room and pick the leaves. Since we moved to the new place in
Jawalakhel, we have been collecting leaves from the plants. We changed the leaves
two times a month at least or sooner so the eco-system is fresh and has good
moisture.
“We would take the praying
mantis out and let it play and exercise as we refreshed and cleaned its living
area inside the glass bowl. We would cover the bowl with cellophane wrap and poke
some holes in it so it there would be air flow. Sometimes, if the leaves dried
out too fast, we would sprinkle water inside.”
Before we knew what to
feed it we gave it some rice as we had seen one Chinese man feed his mantis. She
did not like it and the day passed. We tried again and started getting
desperate around day 3. Our mantis just would NOT eat.
Then we had to do some
more research and found that they eat cockroaches live. The drains of the house
in Chakupat had a lot of cockroaches. We were able to seek out and catch one
and Pallav sir put it near the praying mantis and after a couple of tries, she
attacked it very fast and ate it.
We were so happy. Over the
months, we gave it caterpillars, cockroaches, earthworm, flies, bees and it ate
all of those. When we tried giving it dead insects, sometimes, she would not
feed. We learned she only ate insects that she hunted down on her own. Since
she was an adult, she did not molt.
She started to get fatter
and fatter and we found out that we only need to feed her 3 times a week and
let her out of her bowl to jump around and get exercise. One day I broke the
jar while putting its food for it. We taped it up so that it would not walk out
and fly away.
She was a beautiful green
with lovely green eyes. She would turn around and look at us when we went near.
As the days went by we grew friendlier and less scared of the praying mantis
and so did she. When we first got ger nobody would go close to her. Now we
would let her crawl all over our bodies and not be scared it would bite us. She
became our pet.
She would jump from one
hand to another, climb up our arms and back and even go walking about in the
hair. Especially Vidheha liked to let her out and take care of her and have her
walking about her body. Anita also was not all that afraid. We would have
classes in which we would get roaches, earthworms and let her out and practice
our photography and observation skills.
We then moved to a new
building where roaches, worms, and insects were few. One day, because we were
having difficultly feeding her, Pallav sir brought back 13 caterpillars in a
little plastic container. We put them in thinking she would eat as she got
hungry.
However, it did not work
that way. She over ate and had finished 5 by morning and was very very full. We
were worried. She needed to work off the food so we let her out and left her to
wander around in the night.
Unfortunately, it seems
that she jumped from the window screen on to the floor and we found her in the
morning with one front leg injured and turning black. She could not move that
leg when she walked and she was again angry and would not let us near her. When
Pallav sir picked her up to put her in the eco-system bowl, she tried to bite
him which she had not done for many months.
We hoped that she would
work off her injury but two days later, but six months since we had her, we
found her dead on the floor under the cloth of that covered the table of our
classroom.
We felt bad and we miss
the praying mantis. But we had for six month of her year-long life so that was
pretty good I think. I learned a lot from her life.
No comments:
Post a Comment