The Extraordinary Pet

Let's have a discussion on Praying mantis! The reason is, praying mantis is one of my all-time-favourite insects! =) Praying mantis is one of the few insects which can turn and rotate its tiny head very much like a human does. It can turn its head left, right, and even nod its head! Praying mantis is a predator, it preys on living insects, depending on its size. The larger ones can even prey on small lizards or even birds and etc.

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They use their strong and spikey forearms to catch their preys. Once caught, they will not loosen their grip, and eat the preys alive. They may sound scary, but they are friends to farmers, their food is usually pests.

The one I am going to talk more about on is the Green Praying Mantis. It resembles a ninja a lot in nature.

Firstly, it is a master in camouflage, the body color it has allow it to blend into the surroundings without being noticed. Secondly, praying mantis' best skill is to ambush. It will usually hide at a corner and wait patiently for its chance. Thirdly, it has a ninja's agility to strike at the speed of lightning at high accuracy!

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Here are some of my personal experiences with Praying mantis.

In the past, I used to have a green praying mantis as a family pet. At that time when I caught it in the bushes, it was still a baby mantis I think. We kept it in a glass tank with ample space for it to move around. Most of the time, we let the mantis move around our house under our supervision.

The interesting thing was that the mantis liked to follow our movement. For example, it would follow our fingers, turned its head to look at us whenever it spotted us, and it even followed us when we walked! It liked to be stroked gently on its head and back.

Praying mantis will molt in its life cycle. For our poor mantis, due to our lack of experience in handling. We failed to provide it with a stick that it could stand on during molting. As a result, its legs were deformed during the molting process. We discovered that only on the next day. It was a great pain to see it living the rest of its life with deformed legs, and could no longer run as fast as before. =(

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It gets rid of the flies in our house. We would provide it with pre-caught-flies if it failed to capture its prey after several attempts. Praying mantis is fun to look at and it is simply adorable. It may look like a little alien, but it is one insect that you can raise like any other house pet! (dogs, cats, hamsters) Having a dog as pet is not special, raising a Praying mantis is extraordinarily unique and a great experience!