As regular readers of my Mantis updates probably remember I posted that I only had female mantids and that I was looking for a male.
I was feeding my girls today when I noticed a big difference in one of them. The antennae were much longer and it was much slimmer then the others I had. I took it out of it's habitat to look at it more closely. Low and behold I had a male. It had 8 abdomen segments. How I missed this before is beyond me? Now that I have a male and female that I can compare side by side the differences are very obvious.
Now I can attempt to breed them. :clap:
I guess it just goes to show you never give up.
Tom
I was feeding my girls today when I noticed a big difference in one of them. The antennae were much longer and it was much slimmer then the others I had. I took it out of it's habitat to look at it more closely. Low and behold I had a male. It had 8 abdomen segments. How I missed this before is beyond me? Now that I have a male and female that I can compare side by side the differences are very obvious.
Now I can attempt to breed them. :clap:
I guess it just goes to show you never give up.
Tom
That's how I always told them apart -- I never got the hang of counting abdominal segments. If I have nymphs I just look closely at the terminal segment to determine if it's a male or female.