Likely, we'll never see them again. I understand that that's usually how it goes, but perhaps we'll be favored with a glimpse of some adults in the months to come...
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
praying mantis
A little over a month ago we bought this praying mantis egg case at the Farmer's Market. I thought it would be fun for Naiya to see the wonder of birth in the insect kingdom. The egg sat in the covered jar on our kitchen counter and we were all pretty sure nothing was going to happen. Then, this morning (after a few weeks of warm weather...just like the instructions promised) I looked over and thought, what's all that stuff in the jar?
They hatched!
We couldn't believe they all came out of that little egg case. (The case is that brown blob in the lower right of this picture.) There must have been about 70 or 80 of the little critters.
Pretty immediately we noticed that some of them didn't make it, so we quickly released them out in the garden.
Likely, we'll never see them again. I understand that that's usually how it goes, but perhaps we'll be favored with a glimpse of some adults in the months to come...
Likely, we'll never see them again. I understand that that's usually how it goes, but perhaps we'll be favored with a glimpse of some adults in the months to come...
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Wow that is really neat! I bet your daughter loved seeing nature up close. We are observing some eggs and caterpillars right now.
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~ joey ~
This looks like so much fun! We'll have to do this. Your jar looks much nicer then our butterfly jar looked. I'll have to remember the cheesecloth top next time. Ours exploded with mold, ick.
ReplyDeletewhat an incredible thing to be able to witness. Pray Mantis aren't native to the UK so we couldn't do this and release them into the wild, but we did watch some caterpillars turn into butterfly and that was really wonderful to watch.
ReplyDeleteHow fun, we did this when the kids were little, and really enjoyed watching them hatch. Many of them did stay around and grow up and lay eggs and we always had praying mantis in our garden. In my current garden the praying mantis leave eggs on our fence every year, and we have quite a nice population which is so nice for the garden. Such a fun creature to watch.
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