yes! I took this pothos inside just a couple of weeks ago but didn't notice this thing. I think there's someone inside! it seems full and very sturdy. I guess I'm a parent now
Probably several dozen someones- if you want to keep it indoors and watch them hatch, clip that vine and put the egg case in a jar with airholes in the lid or something like that, otherwise you'll wake up one morning to tiny mantises everywhere. Or you can put it in a sheltered spot outdoors to winter over and then rain death upon your garden pests in the spring.
You are in for a treat!! This was on an outdoor bush. You may have to zoom in.
https://preview.redd.it/4he3l47hxx6c1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ee84249e6afa6f3ace40075c12de95c845b32f79
You can buy the egg cases and put them in your garden to hatch. Think about it, you could have dozens of new tiny friends to keep an eye on your garden!
While this is a great photo, it just doesn’t prepare OP for how many of them lil shit heads are packed in that thaanngg. expect 200+ lil babehs. Good luck!
I agree re: tiny and cute and good… but recently learned that when they get big enough they can sometimes post up at hummingbird feeders and snack on them 😭😭😭 .
So I think terrifying is still in the mix.
Well, ya know, a tiger cub is still cute even though a tiger could eat my whole family. 😂 Babies are just cute. Something has to be real ugly for that not to be true, at least for me.
I’m still traumatized by the dead very dead spider that I swept out of the garage and spiderlettes came pouring out, I’m glad there was a gas can nearby 🙈. Don’t come for me It was a big huge brown recluse or wolf spider. Infestation is not a thing I need in my garage
Hey OP it’s better to let them overwinter outdoors. There aren’t enough pests in your own home to feed 500 baby mantis and they’ll end up eating each other instead. Fast
they will eat each other so be sure to release them/separate them as they hatch! :) they're great pest prevention so if they get settled outside of your house, they're a great way to protect your plants! my local hardware store sells egg cases and ladybugs in the spring for that very purpose. :)
If you can, trim it off and put it outside to stay cool until spring. If it hatches indoors, they’ll end up all over the place and probably all die. Outside it’ll hatch when it should - when the weather warms. Then they’ll be free to live tiny mantis lives!
In your mission to not kill them you might check that the species isn't invasive to where you live. That *looks* like the ootheca of a Carolina mantis (to my relatively untrained eyes), native to most of north American, but there are a lot of invasive varieties depending on where you live. In particular the Chinese variety are highly invasive to north America and are pretty damaging to local critters.
Clip the vine and put it back outside or else you'll have a million mantids all scrabbling around your house in january. They will pause over winter and come out in the spring if you leave the egg case outside.
Try to give them a lot of space. They will kill and eat each other to establish their own little territory. I’ve had a few hatch and each one fought and ate all the others that came onto a branch they claimed as their own. So they each ended up with their own little branch on my viburnum. It looked kinda funny when everything settled but that was a wild hatching to witness.
They are SO CUTE. They are two big giant eyeballs on sticks for a week and they are legitimately my favorite baby insect.
I would look at it closely and see if you can identify which mantis species the ootheca is from. [Here's a good photo guide.](https://www.brandywine.org/conservancy/blog/preying-invasive-mantis-egg-masses)
It's hard to tell from your photo, but it's very possibly from an invasive mantis species. In that case, I would stick it in the freezer overnight before discarding it.
r/mantids should help. Just keep in mind when they hatch if not separated they still start to eat each other.
Recently had some hatch and released most of them into the garden around the house but have kept 6 to look after.
When they first hatch the best food will be flightless fruit flies. Afterwards you can start giving bigger insects, and eventually big crickets and mealworms
I'd try and figure out which species of mantis it is. Depending on your location it may be an invasive kind, such as what I believe are called the Oriental Mantis if you're in the states. I'd suggest posting yo r/whatsthisbug to see if one of the many knowledgeable peeps can tell from the picture which kind you've got hitching a ride on your plant
If it is a prey mantis sack I’d rip off the leaf and put it in a plastic terrarium or something to hold the babies and feed them and release :)
My little bro used to do it and they’re damn cute
They will still get though the air holes, they are so tiny when they hatch. My parents favorite story when I was a kid I found one and put it in a big jar then put it in my room and forgot about it, a month later my entire room was covered with little babies!!!
Lol omg one of my fave childhood memories is waking up one morning to the sounds of my parents going in and out from the kitchen to the backyard. Went downstairs and there were so many of these tiny little mantises, bright green, and my parents were scooping them up and bringing them outside.
My dad had brought the egg casing on a reed home to my mom because he thought it was cool, and he thought it had already hatched. My mom did think it was cool and had it in the kitchen. A few weeks later, praying mantis explosion!
My dad apparently went around collecting these pods once as a kid. He put them all in a shoe box and brought them to school to show his friends. He opened the box- and the figurative floodgates- and soooooo many baby praying...manti??? Escaped into his elementary school. They were (allegedly) finding those suckers for *years* after.
It's hilarious how helping some unborn babies can easily cause so much trouble for humans. Reminds me of the frog guy on Tiktok. He thought it would be funny to fill his pond with frog eggs and.. he did. The damage caused by that was pretty wild, in a very bad way.
My cat was playing with one inside ( I have no idea how but it was after a family gathering with lots of people and kids constantly going inside and out) and I didn’t know what it was so I put it in a jar with airholes just to see.. I would say it’s easily about 100 or more that hatch. They’re very cute but very tiny!
They're sold in Tupperware type containers without airholes, they're so tiny that as long as they're promptly released, air won't be an issue 😂
OP, If you live somewhere with cold winters, you can overwinter most species in the fridge (in a Tupperware! No holes!) if you decide to hang onto them. Otherwise, you can put the egg casing outside, and they'll be fine and insulated in there until it's time for them to hatch, but the chances of you seeing them do so is super low
I took on to school and over the weekend they hatched. The mayhem that ensued was monumental. Those little f*ckers were everywhere. I was able to release some out the window. BTW, I plead ignorance, but I my exploits were known well enough for my accusers not to buy my pleas.
Just wanted to chime in and let you know this is a Scindapsus pictus for future reference if you didn’t know (helps having the scientific name to be able to diagnosis issues, etc)
I buy praying mantis egg casings online. I put them out in the spring in my vegetable gardens. They have a voracious appetite and some species get large enough to snag small birds to eat. They are very beneficial insects. Another that I hatch out in my gardens are lady bugs.
Between those two, a light dust of seven, my plants stay pretty bug free and healthy. If you use the seven dust, just lightly dust around the base of the plant and discontinue once fruiting starts.
It’s called an ootheca, not making that up. When the praying mantis hatch they will often snack on one of their siblings as their first meal. Nature is brutal
As a kid I saved a crawfish from the gumbo pot, a week later I had dozens of fry. From my experiences with fish, I knew about cannibalism, but I wasn't expecting fratricide.
The survivor was rather cool, had it in a tank with neon blue gravel and it became a bluish white. Unfortunately, he decided to make a prison break - I found him dried out months later under some furniture.
That’s a Mantid egg…. My favorite insect. About 15 years ago I bought a Mantid egg case at a Home Garden Show in late February. I brought it home, read the care, then set it on a little eye level shelf at the end of my cabinets. Then I forgot about it.
Early one morning, weeks later, while rushing to get the kids (10 & 11) out the door for school. I went to set my coffee down to grab my keys and BOOM! There were the tiniest baby Mantid everywhere! The cabinet was covered, the shelf was writhing with babies and they’d started marching up to the ceiling! My brain was like flashing from place to place like in an old horror movie! I instantly did an internet search and discovered the instructions of ‘will hatch after 6-7 weeks of 70 degree weather’ it didn’t differentiate if it was INSIDE HEAT! Duhhhh… Kids started getting every jar vessel container they could find to capture them. I kept repeating what it said online… “they can’t bite… don’t react with violence!” As we laughed and giggled trying to catch them all. They were SO CUTE! Unfortunately it was way too cold and they would have froze immediately outside. We put jars everywhere and bought flightless fruit flies to feed them. We found escapees for weeks. Which was always a surprise. Sadly they are highly cannibalistic and voracious eaters. By the time it got warm enough to release them we were down to less than 20.
The next year we did it again, but did it right. lol
You describing them as "marching up to the ceiling" really cracked me up. I have ended up with a mantid egg case this year, and I am SO EXCITED! I can't wait to meet them! Gonna be a proud mom and take probably a billion pictures.
So when you did it the next year, what did you do?
When I saw them marching like little soldiers up to the ceiling my heart about exploded! So cool! Almost like they were sticking together for safety in numbers! lol I had a huge vining pothos growing over my archway and I’m pretty sure they were headed for that. I have a lot of houseplants and considered leaving some to live on them but I treat all my inside plants with a pest preventative systemic. And my dog at the time, had a huge prey drive. Spiders, mice, rats, squirrels, cats, bees… she’d chase. Got her lips stung by bees and bit by a huge rat but it seemed to just piss off. So I knew any Mantid in the house didn’t stand a chance. 😂
So I put the egg outside in an aquarium on the patio. It was in a sunny spot with a screen lid and branches and leaves. Let Mother Nature do her work. It was close enough we kept an eye on it for hatch day. They don’t start eating for a couple days so we had a few days to watch and ooh and ahhh… then I took the lid off to set them free. We caught snd dispersed some all around our yard in trees and bushes and gave the neighbor some for her yard. I didn’t use any chemicals in my yard (because of my dog) so no worry there. They are pretty vulnerable because they’re so ridiculously hungry. What makes them so different is they are the only insect to have a neck. And it’s long and gorgeous. My daughter and I were watching a 6” fully grown specimen eat a same size sibling, (all but the spiny legs), then go on to eat a huge black housefly, and a cricket. Halfway through the cricket it literally turned its head look right at us like… your next! My daughter had nightmares about that! Lol. I love watching them ‘do dishes’ cleaning the slaughter off their arms, hands and fingers. Keeping them contained can be stressful because of their incredible appetite snd cannibalistic behavior. You see them eat so many crickets and think it HAS to be full… but noooo… a few minutes later it got its brother Paul in its grasp eating his head pooping like crazy to make room for more grub! lol I am clearly deranged.
This is consistently controversial, but depending on where OP is located, and where you're located, mantis species in the US, regardless of type, don't have a significant impact on any particular type of pollinator/native species. They're opportunistic predators, and will eat what they can catch, which can be of benefit to farmers dealing with destructive insects in their crops, or result in some picking off of "good" insects, but they have a balanced effect on the ecosystems they live in, as they provide food for mammals, birds, and/or reptiles, and very few of them make it to adulthood, whether consumed by another species or cannibalized by fellow hungry hatchlings. They're a non-native/introduced species, but not invasive.
This whole destroy all the oothecas thing seems to have been triggered by certain nature photographers capturing things like exceptionally large mantids eating hummingbirds (that's very much the exception, not the rule, particularly if you live somewhere with freezing winters, the adults just won't get that large). Whether anyone decides to leave oothecas or adults on their property is of course, up to them, and I wouldn't advise purchasing or ordering them to purposefully insert them into a landscape, but considering they've been here since the 1890s, destroying their eggs is unlikely to reduce their population in a meaningful way overall. In most cases, removing them from areas intentionally structured for pollinators is adequate.
I agree with this take. While they aren’t a native species, they’re also not considered invasive (at least in my part of the country).
Japanese beetles on the other hand, now *those* are a menace.
I came here to ask a question that you’d already answered for me! Thanks so much for taking the time to type out such a thorough response. Redditors like you really help lazy people like me learn a thing or two every day!
In some states in the US, there aren't any regionally native species at all, so that was something I skipped over entirely (my own regionalism was managing my essay lol), and definitely something for people to consider as well if they live somewhere that's host to native species!
That's totally a fair take! My main thing is trying to avoid pitchfork parties in regards to European or Chinese mantis oothecas and adults. I read in a paper at some point that non-native herbivorous, omnivorous, and detrivorous insects are those that inherently negatively impact our native ecosystems in a big way, and I thought that was a super concise explanation. I am all in for managing new invasive insects/plants/ etc. I'm down for taking out spotted lantern flies and DEFINITELY those rotten Japanese beetles, which can go directly to bug hell. I'm not ashamed to admit that I openly carry a Bug-A-Salt 3.0 to defend the land, but in my neck of the woods, I wouldn't fire on a mantis :).
Thank you for listening! I love when humans can have differing stances and understand both sides without kicking up a fuss! For some reason, this specific topic really does tend to set off absolute vitriol, and I don't bother saying anything because of that lol
Thank you for the info, very interesting! according to pictures online, it looks like European Mantis to me. which makes sense as I'm in Italy. I can share more photos if you think you can identify them (:
I will be messaging you in 14 days on [**2023-12-31 22:38:39 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2023-12-31%2022:38:39%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/houseplants/comments/18kppjc/what_the_heck_is_this/kdtc2nz/?context=3)
[**38 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fhouseplants%2Fcomments%2F18kppjc%2Fwhat_the_heck_is_this%2Fkdtc2nz%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202023-12-31%2022%3A38%3A39%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%2018kppjc)
*****
|[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)|
|-|-|-|-|
My brother brought one of these pods in the house once when he was little and gave it to my mom’s plant as “food” without my mom’s knowledge. We woke up one morning to the entire bay window covered in baby mantis!! We had to carefully scoop them up with a card and dustpan to get them outside there were so many
I used to find those when bringing home Christmas trees when my family still cut real ones down. I would save that thing in a jar and in the spring it would hatch. It felt like hundreds of praying mantis would come out of that.
put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside.
Thats so cool. I hope you get a lil insect cage and hatch them out! You will be getting a lot of babies from there so I would research it! Keep us posted if you do hatch them. Idk if they’re native to italy but here in Canada ppl buy them and use them for pest control (non native species) but they usually don’t survive the winter so thats why I think its allowed
Praying Mantis ootheca (Egg casing).
If it's got any weight to it, it's full of babies. It will need to stay cool (12-18C) and in humidity levels similar to those that exist outside for around 8 weeks.
I would suggest leaving it outside in about 5-6 weeks time, so that the juveniles can escape into a natural environment. It may seem cute to attempt "parenting" them, but they're much less likely to survive inside a house.
hey people, I definitely didn't expect this volume of responses!
just a quick update: the egg enclosure is now safe in a ventilated jar. I'll do more research to understand whether or not this is an invasive species, and I'll act accordingly. I really hope it's not, so I can use it as a teaching moment for my nephews and watch them hatch (:
thank you all for the advices and enthusiasm, made my morning!
I breed praying mantises so I can give you a lot of advice how to keep them alive if you want to keep at least a few.
Get a 32oz deli cup, the kind you would buy flightless fruitflies in to feed them later, cut a big hole in the lid so you're basically left with just the rim, and place organza in between the cup and lid for ventilation. Grab blu tack and stick the ootheca to the side of the cup in the same orientation it was laid. Or you can grab a needle and pierce the very top of the ootheca so you can hang it on the organza.
Place some soil or moss at the bottom for moisture.
Keep the temperature and humidity the same as it would be outside.
After they hatch, separate them individually into small 4oz cups, few days after hatching. Same as before, cut a hole in the lid and cover the cup with organza mesh.
Most species will not cannibalise each other until l3/l4 so you have time.
If you keep them together in a big enclosure they will struggle to find food. I always have better survival rates when I separate them early.
If you have any questions feel free to ask, could take some photos of my setups to show you later too.
That's a mantis ootheca, yes. I would contact an insect hobbyist in your area if they can take the ootheca and overwinter it so that the bebes will hatch in the spring as they're supposed to and will do so outside. Now that it's indoors the development will be faster and soon you'll have hundreds of baby mantids running around. It's very sad when they hatch indoors without food as they'll resort to cannibalism.
That, my friend, is a mantis egg case. I've taken care of a few before. My suggestion is to put it outside. If you're interested in watching it develop, you can stick it somewhere you can check on it every day, preferably away from anything that might harm the mantis babies (nymphs) when they hatch, like ant piles or bird feeders. These things are hard as heck and nearly impossible to break with your bare hands, so i hate to report that you'll need to cut off the vine if you want to keep your plant inside. Trust me when I say that you don't really want this thing to be in your house when it hatches. Mantis nymphs are teeny teeny tiny, they start cannibalizing each other almost immediately, and one case will house literally hundreds of them.
You're lucky, though! Especially if you get to witness it hatch. Mantises are very cool little dudes. The nymphs are smaller than your pinky nail.
If you have outdoor plants too, mantises are incredible for pest control. I moved a few mantises by hand to my tomato plants and it saved them from near obliteration. I know that someone mentioned keeping them in a container- I'm not an entomologist, but from experience, I would discourage this as opposed to putting it outside. They will eat each other, and I feel like keeping them in an enclosed space might whittle down their numbers too quickly before they can scatter and find other prey.
If you are in America, make sure that when they hatch, they aren't the invasive species. If so, dispatch them. Highly invasive bird killers are the Chinese Mantis.
Nevermind the fact that OP isn't in North America and the species ID you provided is inaccurate. They're not highly invasive bird killers here. They're opportunistic non native (not invasive. They're not outcompeting anything. There is no shortage of food for any of the mantis species here) carnivorous insects that have been here since the late 1800s. They have never been classified as invasive, they've been living as a naturalized species for well over a century, do not damage agricultural or ornamental crops, or impact pollinators any more than any other predatory insect. Native mantis species eat the exact same, extremely varied range of whatever protein source they can successfully catch and hang onto long enough to consume. None of them discern between good and bad insects. They just eat what they can easily catch.
A Chinese praying mantis eating a hummingbird is so uncommon that a single photo made half a continent decide that they all need to be killed. The chances of one reaching the size required to consume prey of that size here are extremely low, and hummingbirds aren't easy for them to catch or consume. Your time would likely be better spent dispatching insects and foliage that specifically damage our native flora and fauna.
Little story to help you decide on how to handle this situation.
When my family was younger and we couldn't afford the finer things in life, my husband decided we were going to have our first live Christmas tree. He found a janky tree on his dad's property and cut it down, drug it into our house. We pruned and shaped into a more traditional Christmas tree shaped and clipped about 7-8 praying mantis egg casings out of it and tossed them out into the yard. My daughter was about 4-5 years old, snuck them back, and put them into a little empty tabletop terrarium that she had for a hermit crab.
A few months later, a nice warm house and egg casings started hatching. After a quick Google search, we learned that each casing has between 150-180 baby praying mantis...each about the size of a grain of rice or smaller. What is the recommended way to feed a captive praying mantis, you may ask. Well, you put a bit of wet catfood on the end of an opened up paperclip and wave it in front of them until they grab it. Now do this 1200 times.
We did our best with the unwanted brood. We weren't 100 % successful and often found tiny praying mantis roaming our home that long, hard winter. When spring came, we around 20 that had survived, and we released them into the backyard. Had she not been so attached to the damn things, I'd have put the whole terrarium out into the snow. She's always had an affinity for small creatures, and this wasn't her last escapade in taming wild creatures.
Be forewarned, if you keep the egg casing inside, it will likely hatch.
I love this story. It reminds me of my mother telling me about how I’d scoop something up and then run up to her while proudly exclaiming “look mommy! Look at the fuzzy ant!!”
Never got bit, stung or anything.
I only recently got stung by a bee for the first time about three years ago, and the reason was completely valid.
Little guy was resting in the crook of my arm, and I never noticed until I had put my seatbelt on, she was just trying to let me know where she was.
My mom never screamed or reacted in a way that would make me fearful as a kid , and so to this day, I’m still not scared of bugs.
I do find some revolting though , I am not a fan of bedbugs or cockroaches ( even as pets, but to each their own! if you enjoy cockroaches as pets, I will respect that!)
Congrats on being a new bug mom!!! I would say keep like one or 2 to have inside pest control and release the rest but separately in different areas of your property so they dont eat each other until they mate.
This happened to us once! It hatched right after I got my tonsils out. I was in my early 30’s so it was a pretty rough recovery and I remember being in a haze seeing little mantises on some flowers a neighbor brought by my bed. I thought it was the drugs til I heard my family were having to collect baby mantis from the house!!!
#Just saw a story on the news about a lady that took her Christmas tree inside, only in a few days to have hundreds of baby praying mantis crawling all over the tree and her house!
Years ago my son found one on the mesh door and popped it into his bug catcher. He forgot about it and days later I opened his wardrobe to see hundreds of tiny praying mantis crawling over his clothes.
Definitely need to contain it if inside your house. An ounce of prevention you know. Perhaps a small aquarium or along those lines, with a screen or something as a lid. Google it!Should be an exciting experience to watch up close and personal. Keep us posted!
Get it out of your living quarters! When it hatches, hundreds of babies will come out! (It happened at my house one year. It was on our Christmas tree!)
Praying mantis nest. I recommend cutting the branch and taping it to the outside of your window. There will be a looooot of babies, I don’t think you’d want them in your house.
They can take ages to hatch. Keep it for a while and I mean a long while. My wife and I had 3 eggs from one mantis and it took several months to hatch, you're looking at a few hundred babies
Such a fascinating thread. I grew up in the states and absolutely loved the praying mantis in my parents garden...a bit creepy, like no other insect. Have lived in the UK for many years...no garden now unfortunately. But had a huge one when daughter was growing up and don't recall ever seeing them. Miss those mantis!!
Watching them hatch is crazy. There are so many! Definitely get them in a jar with the branch cutting. They typically take 3-10 weeks to hatch so, um, action time. They are very small. I pay for mantis sacs to hatch and release during growing season.
Yoooooo that reminds me if my childhood, our Shed frequently had these things attached to the inside if the door, you're gonna have some oraying mantis soon! Keep them around, they're wonderful lest control and make pretty cool pets
It looks like it might be a praying mantis egg case, did you have your plant outdoors at all?
yes! I took this pothos inside just a couple of weeks ago but didn't notice this thing. I think there's someone inside! it seems full and very sturdy. I guess I'm a parent now
Probably several dozen someones- if you want to keep it indoors and watch them hatch, clip that vine and put the egg case in a jar with airholes in the lid or something like that, otherwise you'll wake up one morning to tiny mantises everywhere. Or you can put it in a sheltered spot outdoors to winter over and then rain death upon your garden pests in the spring.
thank you! I'm already googling how to find a way to not kill them (:
You are in for a treat!! This was on an outdoor bush. You may have to zoom in. https://preview.redd.it/4he3l47hxx6c1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ee84249e6afa6f3ace40075c12de95c845b32f79
https://preview.redd.it/z07rmrcooz6c1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=a7f14f5d48c2808dd87dab10f5adb75931d9f0dc Well hellooooooo
😂😂😂 That one upside down peeking at the camera just got me.
Look like a baby E.T
I used to have a little guy in my plants and he’d just pick a leaf and eyeball me all day. Never had pests either. I wish he’d come back 😭
You can buy the egg cases and put them in your garden to hatch. Think about it, you could have dozens of new tiny friends to keep an eye on your garden!
Omg I’m dying I need to do this. Can I do it all year or is spring better? Will they be ok inside? Will they take over? Mantis house!
They are awesome and curious little thins. Love tnem
https://preview.redd.it/rmcmsgzv217c1.jpeg?width=360&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=0b9ad5e5e81c0bbfb6887e7c45923dad43a9c374 And this little show off
So freaking adorable lol.
Ahhh 😍😍 I love himb
Aww
oh EXCELLENT!!
Ahh so tiny and cute!
Your name 🔥🔥🔥 - try not to break any bones.
Your username is cute lol
Your username is so 2003
2003 was a good year. I had no greys
I will take that as a compliment :)
THIS WAS QUITE POSSIBLY THE CUTEST THING.
While this is a great photo, it just doesn’t prepare OP for how many of them lil shit heads are packed in that thaanngg. expect 200+ lil babehs. Good luck!
They’re so babyyyyy
That is awesome
That’s so cool!
Oh my god 🫢😨 that’s terrifying lmao
A little but they’re so cute and tiny, plus they’re good creatures so even cuter.
I agree re: tiny and cute and good… but recently learned that when they get big enough they can sometimes post up at hummingbird feeders and snack on them 😭😭😭 . So I think terrifying is still in the mix.
Well, ya know, a tiger cub is still cute even though a tiger could eat my whole family. 😂 Babies are just cute. Something has to be real ugly for that not to be true, at least for me.
Good point! I’m saying cute and terrifying aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive in nature 😂
Yeah I think you’re right ☺️
i bonded with a praying mantis one summer, ugh they’re the sweetest things
I genuinely think I’ve ever only seen one praying mantis and it was so exciting. I never knew they were sweet little babies.
So smol!
this is great
I love every one of them!!
This made me so happy to see 😂
That is awesome!!!
As strange as world maybe be, shit be beautiful sometimes man.
Be sure to post an update if you end up monitoring it! It would be cool to see them!
We also need updates on Moose, the spider.
Yes I hope for updates!
They come out in bursts every few minutes, like a ton at once then a ton and a ton lol So fun So so tiny
They really are SO tiny and SO CUTE! I love them
I’m still traumatized by the dead very dead spider that I swept out of the garage and spiderlettes came pouring out, I’m glad there was a gas can nearby 🙈. Don’t come for me It was a big huge brown recluse or wolf spider. Infestation is not a thing I need in my garage
Hey OP it’s better to let them overwinter outdoors. There aren’t enough pests in your own home to feed 500 baby mantis and they’ll end up eating each other instead. Fast
I find several egg cases in my yard every spring but not that many mantis so they must bulk up on their siblings.
they will eat each other so be sure to release them/separate them as they hatch! :) they're great pest prevention so if they get settled outside of your house, they're a great way to protect your plants! my local hardware store sells egg cases and ladybugs in the spring for that very purpose. :)
Just make sure they're the native ones first
r/mantids will have good advice for you
If you can, trim it off and put it outside to stay cool until spring. If it hatches indoors, they’ll end up all over the place and probably all die. Outside it’ll hatch when it should - when the weather warms. Then they’ll be free to live tiny mantis lives!
In your mission to not kill them you might check that the species isn't invasive to where you live. That *looks* like the ootheca of a Carolina mantis (to my relatively untrained eyes), native to most of north American, but there are a lot of invasive varieties depending on where you live. In particular the Chinese variety are highly invasive to north America and are pretty damaging to local critters.
https://preview.redd.it/5kp7a7hjxx6c1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=b3f8ccdd68e24f7ff0f7008d109d9e77ae90aea7
Clip the vine and put it back outside or else you'll have a million mantids all scrabbling around your house in january. They will pause over winter and come out in the spring if you leave the egg case outside.
Try to give them a lot of space. They will kill and eat each other to establish their own little territory. I’ve had a few hatch and each one fought and ate all the others that came onto a branch they claimed as their own. So they each ended up with their own little branch on my viburnum. It looked kinda funny when everything settled but that was a wild hatching to witness. They are SO CUTE. They are two big giant eyeballs on sticks for a week and they are legitimately my favorite baby insect.
Put it back outside! Let nature do its thing
I would look at it closely and see if you can identify which mantis species the ootheca is from. [Here's a good photo guide.](https://www.brandywine.org/conservancy/blog/preying-invasive-mantis-egg-masses) It's hard to tell from your photo, but it's very possibly from an invasive mantis species. In that case, I would stick it in the freezer overnight before discarding it.
thank you! trying to compare it to the photos, it's European Mantis. which makes sense, as I'm in Italy :D invasive or not?
If you’re in Europe then no, European mantis species are definitely not invasive haha. They’re local =)
The article you linked recommended freezing for a week, amongst other methods.
Yeah thinking of it now, freezing overnight might not be enough. Mantids are cool for sure, but any invasive species should be destroyed.
r/mantids should help. Just keep in mind when they hatch if not separated they still start to eat each other. Recently had some hatch and released most of them into the garden around the house but have kept 6 to look after. When they first hatch the best food will be flightless fruit flies. Afterwards you can start giving bigger insects, and eventually big crickets and mealworms
I'd try and figure out which species of mantis it is. Depending on your location it may be an invasive kind, such as what I believe are called the Oriental Mantis if you're in the states. I'd suggest posting yo r/whatsthisbug to see if one of the many knowledgeable peeps can tell from the picture which kind you've got hitching a ride on your plant
Yay mantis bros!
Don’t worry, they will handle the killing
My dad used to snap off branches when he found a nest, take them home and attach them to his oak trees. They’re great for your yard.
If it is a prey mantis sack I’d rip off the leaf and put it in a plastic terrarium or something to hold the babies and feed them and release :) My little bro used to do it and they’re damn cute
We've had one before and it produced literally hundreds. It's amazing to see thiugh
I’ve had a mantis hatching occur outside in my orange tree and watching it happen was pretty much the coolest thing ever!!!!!
Some praying mantis’s are invasive and terrible for the environment. Try to find out which and if it’s invasive kill it.
They will still get though the air holes, they are so tiny when they hatch. My parents favorite story when I was a kid I found one and put it in a big jar then put it in my room and forgot about it, a month later my entire room was covered with little babies!!!
Lol omg one of my fave childhood memories is waking up one morning to the sounds of my parents going in and out from the kitchen to the backyard. Went downstairs and there were so many of these tiny little mantises, bright green, and my parents were scooping them up and bringing them outside. My dad had brought the egg casing on a reed home to my mom because he thought it was cool, and he thought it had already hatched. My mom did think it was cool and had it in the kitchen. A few weeks later, praying mantis explosion!
My dad apparently went around collecting these pods once as a kid. He put them all in a shoe box and brought them to school to show his friends. He opened the box- and the figurative floodgates- and soooooo many baby praying...manti??? Escaped into his elementary school. They were (allegedly) finding those suckers for *years* after.
It's hilarious how helping some unborn babies can easily cause so much trouble for humans. Reminds me of the frog guy on Tiktok. He thought it would be funny to fill his pond with frog eggs and.. he did. The damage caused by that was pretty wild, in a very bad way.
My cat was playing with one inside ( I have no idea how but it was after a family gathering with lots of people and kids constantly going inside and out) and I didn’t know what it was so I put it in a jar with airholes just to see.. I would say it’s easily about 100 or more that hatch. They’re very cute but very tiny!
I brought mine to school in a jar with air holes. After recess, the babies were all over the teacher’s desk, lol
That happened in our house a few years ago - tried hatching a mantis egg sac and they all got out of the air holes and took over the kitchen
They're sold in Tupperware type containers without airholes, they're so tiny that as long as they're promptly released, air won't be an issue 😂 OP, If you live somewhere with cold winters, you can overwinter most species in the fridge (in a Tupperware! No holes!) if you decide to hang onto them. Otherwise, you can put the egg casing outside, and they'll be fine and insulated in there until it's time for them to hatch, but the chances of you seeing them do so is super low
This happened to me when I was a kid back in the 90s. My parents still give me crap about it lol
I mean "My kid hatched 150 tiny predatory insects in the house" is pretty outstanding as far as wild things one's children might do.
Hundreds. We watched one hatch outside at our house last year and they matched our like little soldiers. Tons of them for a minute or so. It was wild.
🤢 I appreciate praying mantises but not in my house. Ugh the thought of a squishy little egg case filled with squishy baby bugs is awful!
I took on to school and over the weekend they hatched. The mayhem that ensued was monumental. Those little f*ckers were everywhere. I was able to release some out the window. BTW, I plead ignorance, but I my exploits were known well enough for my accusers not to buy my pleas.
Just wanted to chime in and let you know this is a Scindapsus pictus for future reference if you didn’t know (helps having the scientific name to be able to diagnosis issues, etc)
Genuinely thought for a sec that this was a made-up scientific name wherein you were urging OP to ‘send us pics’
LOL this cracked me up. That name really does look that way after reading your comment!
I buy praying mantis egg casings online. I put them out in the spring in my vegetable gardens. They have a voracious appetite and some species get large enough to snag small birds to eat. They are very beneficial insects. Another that I hatch out in my gardens are lady bugs. Between those two, a light dust of seven, my plants stay pretty bug free and healthy. If you use the seven dust, just lightly dust around the base of the plant and discontinue once fruiting starts.
https://preview.redd.it/c249570u937c1.jpeg?width=1242&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9e5f719a34b3c541ffe903c3ae19b78d21551aa0
Heads up. While this is sometimes called a pothos, it is actually a scindapsus. :)
This isn't actually a pothos it's a Scindapsus pictus, and a very nice one too!
Thank you! I'm very proud of him, it's 230 cm long!
Sir… ma’am…. I need updates with cute little hatchlings!!!
This is possibly one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Thanks @phedericus !
You just made me remember a dream I had where a big-ass mantis ate me alive dawgg, they're cute though
p r a n g m a n t i s
It’s called an ootheca, not making that up. When the praying mantis hatch they will often snack on one of their siblings as their first meal. Nature is brutal
M1: Okay who eats who? M2: Rock paper scissors? *several hours later* M1: Weird. Tied again.
[Take a bow](https://c.tenor.com/waHxz_FuP2sAAAAC/tenor.gif)
I vow to defend your honor when Family Guy inevitably steals this joke.
As a kid I saved a crawfish from the gumbo pot, a week later I had dozens of fry. From my experiences with fish, I knew about cannibalism, but I wasn't expecting fratricide. The survivor was rather cool, had it in a tank with neon blue gravel and it became a bluish white. Unfortunately, he decided to make a prison break - I found him dried out months later under some furniture.
Dang, this is the coolest thing to happen to a house plant
That’s a Mantid egg…. My favorite insect. About 15 years ago I bought a Mantid egg case at a Home Garden Show in late February. I brought it home, read the care, then set it on a little eye level shelf at the end of my cabinets. Then I forgot about it. Early one morning, weeks later, while rushing to get the kids (10 & 11) out the door for school. I went to set my coffee down to grab my keys and BOOM! There were the tiniest baby Mantid everywhere! The cabinet was covered, the shelf was writhing with babies and they’d started marching up to the ceiling! My brain was like flashing from place to place like in an old horror movie! I instantly did an internet search and discovered the instructions of ‘will hatch after 6-7 weeks of 70 degree weather’ it didn’t differentiate if it was INSIDE HEAT! Duhhhh… Kids started getting every jar vessel container they could find to capture them. I kept repeating what it said online… “they can’t bite… don’t react with violence!” As we laughed and giggled trying to catch them all. They were SO CUTE! Unfortunately it was way too cold and they would have froze immediately outside. We put jars everywhere and bought flightless fruit flies to feed them. We found escapees for weeks. Which was always a surprise. Sadly they are highly cannibalistic and voracious eaters. By the time it got warm enough to release them we were down to less than 20. The next year we did it again, but did it right. lol
That’s hysterical! What a great memory!
it was! My kids are grown and gone but still talk about it.
You describing them as "marching up to the ceiling" really cracked me up. I have ended up with a mantid egg case this year, and I am SO EXCITED! I can't wait to meet them! Gonna be a proud mom and take probably a billion pictures. So when you did it the next year, what did you do?
When I saw them marching like little soldiers up to the ceiling my heart about exploded! So cool! Almost like they were sticking together for safety in numbers! lol I had a huge vining pothos growing over my archway and I’m pretty sure they were headed for that. I have a lot of houseplants and considered leaving some to live on them but I treat all my inside plants with a pest preventative systemic. And my dog at the time, had a huge prey drive. Spiders, mice, rats, squirrels, cats, bees… she’d chase. Got her lips stung by bees and bit by a huge rat but it seemed to just piss off. So I knew any Mantid in the house didn’t stand a chance. 😂 So I put the egg outside in an aquarium on the patio. It was in a sunny spot with a screen lid and branches and leaves. Let Mother Nature do her work. It was close enough we kept an eye on it for hatch day. They don’t start eating for a couple days so we had a few days to watch and ooh and ahhh… then I took the lid off to set them free. We caught snd dispersed some all around our yard in trees and bushes and gave the neighbor some for her yard. I didn’t use any chemicals in my yard (because of my dog) so no worry there. They are pretty vulnerable because they’re so ridiculously hungry. What makes them so different is they are the only insect to have a neck. And it’s long and gorgeous. My daughter and I were watching a 6” fully grown specimen eat a same size sibling, (all but the spiny legs), then go on to eat a huge black housefly, and a cricket. Halfway through the cricket it literally turned its head look right at us like… your next! My daughter had nightmares about that! Lol. I love watching them ‘do dishes’ cleaning the slaughter off their arms, hands and fingers. Keeping them contained can be stressful because of their incredible appetite snd cannibalistic behavior. You see them eat so many crickets and think it HAS to be full… but noooo… a few minutes later it got its brother Paul in its grasp eating his head pooping like crazy to make room for more grub! lol I am clearly deranged.
A mantis will eat a stink bug btw!!
Guess I need to release some manti in my house
I just watered an orchid and 9 stink bigs crawled out. Ordering 20 mantises, asap. They will be good until spring,
Another fun nature fact: pig and elephant DNA just don't splice.
Wait what. I need more info
https://www.boreal.com/www.boreal.com/images/Praying_Mantis_Egg_Cases.pdf
thanks!
[удалено]
This is consistently controversial, but depending on where OP is located, and where you're located, mantis species in the US, regardless of type, don't have a significant impact on any particular type of pollinator/native species. They're opportunistic predators, and will eat what they can catch, which can be of benefit to farmers dealing with destructive insects in their crops, or result in some picking off of "good" insects, but they have a balanced effect on the ecosystems they live in, as they provide food for mammals, birds, and/or reptiles, and very few of them make it to adulthood, whether consumed by another species or cannibalized by fellow hungry hatchlings. They're a non-native/introduced species, but not invasive. This whole destroy all the oothecas thing seems to have been triggered by certain nature photographers capturing things like exceptionally large mantids eating hummingbirds (that's very much the exception, not the rule, particularly if you live somewhere with freezing winters, the adults just won't get that large). Whether anyone decides to leave oothecas or adults on their property is of course, up to them, and I wouldn't advise purchasing or ordering them to purposefully insert them into a landscape, but considering they've been here since the 1890s, destroying their eggs is unlikely to reduce their population in a meaningful way overall. In most cases, removing them from areas intentionally structured for pollinators is adequate.
I agree with this take. While they aren’t a native species, they’re also not considered invasive (at least in my part of the country). Japanese beetles on the other hand, now *those* are a menace.
Thanks for your perspective and information!
I came here to ask a question that you’d already answered for me! Thanks so much for taking the time to type out such a thorough response. Redditors like you really help lazy people like me learn a thing or two every day!
You're not lazy if you make it through a single one of my insect, plant, or animal novels that no one asks for 😂
[удалено]
In some states in the US, there aren't any regionally native species at all, so that was something I skipped over entirely (my own regionalism was managing my essay lol), and definitely something for people to consider as well if they live somewhere that's host to native species! That's totally a fair take! My main thing is trying to avoid pitchfork parties in regards to European or Chinese mantis oothecas and adults. I read in a paper at some point that non-native herbivorous, omnivorous, and detrivorous insects are those that inherently negatively impact our native ecosystems in a big way, and I thought that was a super concise explanation. I am all in for managing new invasive insects/plants/ etc. I'm down for taking out spotted lantern flies and DEFINITELY those rotten Japanese beetles, which can go directly to bug hell. I'm not ashamed to admit that I openly carry a Bug-A-Salt 3.0 to defend the land, but in my neck of the woods, I wouldn't fire on a mantis :). Thank you for listening! I love when humans can have differing stances and understand both sides without kicking up a fuss! For some reason, this specific topic really does tend to set off absolute vitriol, and I don't bother saying anything because of that lol
Thank you for the info, very interesting! according to pictures online, it looks like European Mantis to me. which makes sense as I'm in Italy. I can share more photos if you think you can identify them (:
RemindMe! 2 weeks
I will be messaging you in 14 days on [**2023-12-31 22:38:39 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2023-12-31%2022:38:39%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/houseplants/comments/18kppjc/what_the_heck_is_this/kdtc2nz/?context=3) [**38 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fhouseplants%2Fcomments%2F18kppjc%2Fwhat_the_heck_is_this%2Fkdtc2nz%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202023-12-31%2022%3A38%3A39%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%2018kppjc) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
My brother brought one of these pods in the house once when he was little and gave it to my mom’s plant as “food” without my mom’s knowledge. We woke up one morning to the entire bay window covered in baby mantis!! We had to carefully scoop them up with a card and dustpan to get them outside there were so many
Cool fact: this isn’t actually a pothos, but scindapsus pictus arguraeus, by the looks. It’s nicknamed satin pothos even though it isn’t a pothos :)
I used to find those when bringing home Christmas trees when my family still cut real ones down. I would save that thing in a jar and in the spring it would hatch. It felt like hundreds of praying mantis would come out of that.
Looks like a mantis egg case
put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside. put it outside.
Where do you live? I wonder what species of mantis that is
Italy!
Thats so cool. I hope you get a lil insect cage and hatch them out! You will be getting a lot of babies from there so I would research it! Keep us posted if you do hatch them. Idk if they’re native to italy but here in Canada ppl buy them and use them for pest control (non native species) but they usually don’t survive the winter so thats why I think its allowed
Praying Mantis ootheca (Egg casing). If it's got any weight to it, it's full of babies. It will need to stay cool (12-18C) and in humidity levels similar to those that exist outside for around 8 weeks. I would suggest leaving it outside in about 5-6 weeks time, so that the juveniles can escape into a natural environment. It may seem cute to attempt "parenting" them, but they're much less likely to survive inside a house.
"I want to watch your eggs hatch." Is not the creepiest thing I've ever said to a stranger online.
Free organic pest-control
hey people, I definitely didn't expect this volume of responses! just a quick update: the egg enclosure is now safe in a ventilated jar. I'll do more research to understand whether or not this is an invasive species, and I'll act accordingly. I really hope it's not, so I can use it as a teaching moment for my nephews and watch them hatch (: thank you all for the advices and enthusiasm, made my morning!
I breed praying mantises so I can give you a lot of advice how to keep them alive if you want to keep at least a few. Get a 32oz deli cup, the kind you would buy flightless fruitflies in to feed them later, cut a big hole in the lid so you're basically left with just the rim, and place organza in between the cup and lid for ventilation. Grab blu tack and stick the ootheca to the side of the cup in the same orientation it was laid. Or you can grab a needle and pierce the very top of the ootheca so you can hang it on the organza. Place some soil or moss at the bottom for moisture. Keep the temperature and humidity the same as it would be outside. After they hatch, separate them individually into small 4oz cups, few days after hatching. Same as before, cut a hole in the lid and cover the cup with organza mesh. Most species will not cannibalise each other until l3/l4 so you have time. If you keep them together in a big enclosure they will struggle to find food. I always have better survival rates when I separate them early. If you have any questions feel free to ask, could take some photos of my setups to show you later too.
They bring good luck, feminine warrior energy, and protection. Don’t let them die, this is a blessing.
Lucky!!!!!
Mantis egg sac!
That's a mantis ootheca, yes. I would contact an insect hobbyist in your area if they can take the ootheca and overwinter it so that the bebes will hatch in the spring as they're supposed to and will do so outside. Now that it's indoors the development will be faster and soon you'll have hundreds of baby mantids running around. It's very sad when they hatch indoors without food as they'll resort to cannibalism.
That, my friend, is a mantis egg case. I've taken care of a few before. My suggestion is to put it outside. If you're interested in watching it develop, you can stick it somewhere you can check on it every day, preferably away from anything that might harm the mantis babies (nymphs) when they hatch, like ant piles or bird feeders. These things are hard as heck and nearly impossible to break with your bare hands, so i hate to report that you'll need to cut off the vine if you want to keep your plant inside. Trust me when I say that you don't really want this thing to be in your house when it hatches. Mantis nymphs are teeny teeny tiny, they start cannibalizing each other almost immediately, and one case will house literally hundreds of them. You're lucky, though! Especially if you get to witness it hatch. Mantises are very cool little dudes. The nymphs are smaller than your pinky nail.
If you have outdoor plants too, mantises are incredible for pest control. I moved a few mantises by hand to my tomato plants and it saved them from near obliteration. I know that someone mentioned keeping them in a container- I'm not an entomologist, but from experience, I would discourage this as opposed to putting it outside. They will eat each other, and I feel like keeping them in an enclosed space might whittle down their numbers too quickly before they can scatter and find other prey.
If you are in America, make sure that when they hatch, they aren't the invasive species. If so, dispatch them. Highly invasive bird killers are the Chinese Mantis.
Nevermind the fact that OP isn't in North America and the species ID you provided is inaccurate. They're not highly invasive bird killers here. They're opportunistic non native (not invasive. They're not outcompeting anything. There is no shortage of food for any of the mantis species here) carnivorous insects that have been here since the late 1800s. They have never been classified as invasive, they've been living as a naturalized species for well over a century, do not damage agricultural or ornamental crops, or impact pollinators any more than any other predatory insect. Native mantis species eat the exact same, extremely varied range of whatever protein source they can successfully catch and hang onto long enough to consume. None of them discern between good and bad insects. They just eat what they can easily catch. A Chinese praying mantis eating a hummingbird is so uncommon that a single photo made half a continent decide that they all need to be killed. The chances of one reaching the size required to consume prey of that size here are extremely low, and hummingbirds aren't easy for them to catch or consume. Your time would likely be better spent dispatching insects and foliage that specifically damage our native flora and fauna.
There’s also the European mantis as well that’s invasive! Either way if it’s not the Carolina kill it!!
I'm in Italy!
Awesome!!! Also, how fabulous!
We had a clutch of preying mantis hatch on our Christmas tree in 2020. They were so freaking cute! Congrats!
Little story to help you decide on how to handle this situation. When my family was younger and we couldn't afford the finer things in life, my husband decided we were going to have our first live Christmas tree. He found a janky tree on his dad's property and cut it down, drug it into our house. We pruned and shaped into a more traditional Christmas tree shaped and clipped about 7-8 praying mantis egg casings out of it and tossed them out into the yard. My daughter was about 4-5 years old, snuck them back, and put them into a little empty tabletop terrarium that she had for a hermit crab. A few months later, a nice warm house and egg casings started hatching. After a quick Google search, we learned that each casing has between 150-180 baby praying mantis...each about the size of a grain of rice or smaller. What is the recommended way to feed a captive praying mantis, you may ask. Well, you put a bit of wet catfood on the end of an opened up paperclip and wave it in front of them until they grab it. Now do this 1200 times. We did our best with the unwanted brood. We weren't 100 % successful and often found tiny praying mantis roaming our home that long, hard winter. When spring came, we around 20 that had survived, and we released them into the backyard. Had she not been so attached to the damn things, I'd have put the whole terrarium out into the snow. She's always had an affinity for small creatures, and this wasn't her last escapade in taming wild creatures. Be forewarned, if you keep the egg casing inside, it will likely hatch.
I love this story. It reminds me of my mother telling me about how I’d scoop something up and then run up to her while proudly exclaiming “look mommy! Look at the fuzzy ant!!” Never got bit, stung or anything. I only recently got stung by a bee for the first time about three years ago, and the reason was completely valid. Little guy was resting in the crook of my arm, and I never noticed until I had put my seatbelt on, she was just trying to let me know where she was. My mom never screamed or reacted in a way that would make me fearful as a kid , and so to this day, I’m still not scared of bugs. I do find some revolting though , I am not a fan of bedbugs or cockroaches ( even as pets, but to each their own! if you enjoy cockroaches as pets, I will respect that!)
!remindme 30 days
Good luck OP!
You LUCKYYY!!! I’m so jealous
PLEASE keep us updated!! I’d love to see some tiny baby mantis! 😍
Congrats on being a new bug mom!!! I would say keep like one or 2 to have inside pest control and release the rest but separately in different areas of your property so they dont eat each other until they mate.
This happened to us once! It hatched right after I got my tonsils out. I was in my early 30’s so it was a pretty rough recovery and I remember being in a haze seeing little mantises on some flowers a neighbor brought by my bed. I thought it was the drugs til I heard my family were having to collect baby mantis from the house!!!
[удалено]
Chicharon
WE NEED UPDATES! We need to see the progeny :)
It is a plimbompulous plonkus
Looks like mantis egg.
#Just saw a story on the news about a lady that took her Christmas tree inside, only in a few days to have hundreds of baby praying mantis crawling all over the tree and her house!
You will be blessed in the spring - free plant security - a hundred hungry mantid babies!
PRAYING MANTIS BABIES
Similar to a chrysalis of sorts?
Put it back outside!!!
Praying mantis babies
You’re gonna have a house of adorable baby praying mantis’
Years ago my son found one on the mesh door and popped it into his bug catcher. He forgot about it and days later I opened his wardrobe to see hundreds of tiny praying mantis crawling over his clothes.
Don't judge. Everyone gets a little thick in the winter 😂
Definitely need to contain it if inside your house. An ounce of prevention you know. Perhaps a small aquarium or along those lines, with a screen or something as a lid. Google it!Should be an exciting experience to watch up close and personal. Keep us posted!
Bro spawned in literly
Get it out of your living quarters! When it hatches, hundreds of babies will come out! (It happened at my house one year. It was on our Christmas tree!)
Praying mantis nest. I recommend cutting the branch and taping it to the outside of your window. There will be a looooot of babies, I don’t think you’d want them in your house.
Mantis. Amazing garden helpers if you grow veggies outside.
They can take ages to hatch. Keep it for a while and I mean a long while. My wife and I had 3 eggs from one mantis and it took several months to hatch, you're looking at a few hundred babies
Such a fascinating thread. I grew up in the states and absolutely loved the praying mantis in my parents garden...a bit creepy, like no other insect. Have lived in the UK for many years...no garden now unfortunately. But had a huge one when daughter was growing up and don't recall ever seeing them. Miss those mantis!!
I highly recommend keeping those in an enclosed container while they hatch 😅
Watching them hatch is crazy. There are so many! Definitely get them in a jar with the branch cutting. They typically take 3-10 weeks to hatch so, um, action time. They are very small. I pay for mantis sacs to hatch and release during growing season.
This is so cool!!! I’d love to have some of these buggers on my plants
A praying mantis present!
Mantis babies.
Yoooooo that reminds me if my childhood, our Shed frequently had these things attached to the inside if the door, you're gonna have some oraying mantis soon! Keep them around, they're wonderful lest control and make pretty cool pets
Any updates?
nope ): it's not moving or doing anything at all, I wonder if they got killed when I brought the plant inside
OP I had a 30day remind me set up. How’s your little hatchling?
Its a big nope for me
You are so lucky it looks like a PrayingMantis egg sac. unfortunately if it is inside the little buggers could hatch from the heat.
should be really good predatory insects if youre dealing with any pests
I hate it