Feeding Baby Mantids

I’ve got several praying mantis ootheca set out to hatch. To do this I just put each one in a small container with some netting and set it in a sunny spot. It usually takes about 30 days after bringing them out of cold storage. There’s also paper pieces mixed in, so that when they hatch they’ll have somewhere to hide from each other.

One that I’d found while doing yard work a couple weeks ago recently hatched, so I attempted to hand-feed a baby mantis. It took several tries to get it recognize cat food on a toothpick as food, but I think once I got some on its arms and it cleaned them with its mouth, it figured out what’s what and on the next try it took it.

I set several aside to try this and I guess I lucked out with the first one – it was totally calm and willing to eat. Some of the others were a lot more frantic or took a lot more convincing, such as putting the food on a thread because they were too scared of the toothpick.

Five days later they haven’t died on me yet. I’m sure live bugs would be the best thing to feed them but they’re soooo tiny:

The smallest thing I could find at a pet store was some “mini” mealworms but they’re still so large that the mantids have no hope of handling them. The smallest ants I could find in the yard were small enough to grab, but they still put up too much of a fight. I have some flightless fruit flies on the way which ought to do the trick. Until then I’m still using tiny amounts of cat food, with some crushed freeze-dried shrimp mixed in for chitin.

The first attempts were very hit-or-miss but after several feedings I’ve got a pretty consistent system worked out: I attach a bit of food to the end of a thread, dangle it in their face, and eventually get them to grab it – usually after several attempts of them backing off in defense or just ignoring the bait and climbing the thread instead. Once they’ve realized it’s food and have a good grip, I just cut the string.