Greetings, guys, gals, and non-binary pals! Welcome back to... The Amazing Plant Project.
My name's Kate and today we're gonna be talking about the first stage of life for the Praying
Mantis. Um.. So, the mantis is significant for the
garden in that it is a natural pest control sort of insect. It.. it eats insects that
are trying to eat the rest of your garden, basically, in addition, to basically anything
else that it can come across. They can fly. They've got some pretty pronounced
wings, and they tend to only live about like six months. So, the egg laying happens in
Autumn, and they hatch in the Spring. And then lay another set of eggs in the Autumn...
you get the point. Um.. So, it's March, now. So the eggs are getting ready to hatch, if
you will, so let's just pop over to that and take a look at 'em.
Alright, so this is the egg case for the mantis and you can see that there's a number of ridges...
Oh, come on. Focus, dang it! There we go!
You can see a number of ridges along the body of it and each of those is kind of a channel
to the eggs so that the baby mantises.. mantisi, however you want to say it, can more easily
get out of the egg case when it's time for them to hatch, because each one of these is
an example of one set of eggs getting laid and it's either... it's somewhere between
ten and four hundred each time. So, you can imagine it's kind of crowded in there when
it's that size. In my experience, this size is on the upward side of that. And just for
scale, it's about the size of the first knuckle of your finger.
And, I almost forgot: In case you're wondering, the plant that the mantis egg sack (case)
is on right now our resident lemon verbena, this guy. I'll talk more about that one later.
See ya later, guys. Just an additional point before I head off,
If you see an egg case or a chrysalis, whathaveyou, depending on the insect, in "the wild," as
it were, unless it's in jeapordy, so like it's in a tree or bush or something and the
whole thing is coming down, or there's a giant rain storm and you know that it's probably
going to be heavily distrubed or destroyed, or in the case of monarch butterflies (endangered/threatened
species), sometimes people collect the pupae so that they can kind of raise them, leave
them where they are. Because the adults of that species determined that the plant, wherever
they are, was a good food source or a good source of a food source. If they depend on
aphids, or something for example, there's aphids on the plant, or the leaves of the
plant are something that that insect eats. Alternatively, sometimes they do put the pupae
or the egg cases on a pole or something. If you can move those, that's kind of a grey
area, but basically, just kind of leave them where they are. Watch them. Make sure they're
doing ok. If you need to intervene or something, ok fine just... ideally, leave them where
they are. Also, if you're gardening and you happen to accidentally cut one of the egg
cases, for example, off of the tree or bush that you're working with, they aren't feeding
on the tree, so they don't need the branch that they're on to be a "live branch," if
you will, so you can just tie it to the rest of the tree with some twine or something.
I've done that before and they've hatched just fine it's been alright, so something
to keep in mind. So, I'll talk to you later, everybody. I hope you're doing ok. Alright,
so that's about it for now. I'm gonna include some extra photographs at the end of this.
If you want to se more of this kind of content and periodic updates on the mantises, as I'll
probably be uploading several continuation videos on the life cycle, hit the subscribe
button down below and the bell icon next to it.... Yeah, over here. The last video that
I uploaded is up here, something that YouTube thinks you might like is over here. And a
link to my other channel, where I do random craft projects and other fun things is over
here. See ya later, guys. Have a good one. :)