Last year the twins, Space Man and Cowboy, got a praying mantis egg case as a birthday present. It was really cool watching all those little buggies hatch out. It was amazing to see how tiny the are when they are just newly hatched. Here's a picture of them right after they had hatched. The brown blob in the bottom of the container is the egg case. One case can hold around 200 baby praying mantises.We really didn't have anything to feed them, so after a day or so we let them loose in our backyard. And wondered if we would ever see any of them after they had grown up. (Space Man and Cowboy moonlight as entomologists in their spare time.)
So my fourth/fourth is of one of those little itty-bitty mantises all grown up. NASA Guy found him/her crawling on the wall of our carport. Pretty cool huh? If you'd like to try hatching your own praying mantises check out our favorite bug place - Insect Lore.
4 comments:
Neato! And a science lesson as well. Sounds like the kids really enjoyed learning about them!!!
When we had an egg case, they all ate each other till there was only one left.
How fun!
I love it! I wanted to order one of those eggs from Insect Lore, but Sir Husband put his foot down and wouldn't let me. :( He didn't want up to 500 insects crawling around. LOL. I should do the ladybugs, he wouldn't mind that. :D
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