Can You Hold a Praying Mantis? Gently, and Rarely

Praying mantises are calm around people and rarely bite, and some will walk across a hand without fuss. The limit on handling is the animal's fragility. A mantis is a thin-legged insect that jumps, often flies as an adult, and cannot survive much of a fall or a squeeze, so handling stays short and occasional.

The Correct Approach

Let the mantis walk onto your hand or a tool instead of grabbing it. Hold a flat hand or a stick in front of it and nudge it gently from behind, and it will usually step forward onto the new perch. Let it walk hand over hand if it wants to keep moving, and put it back on a branch when it stops. Never restrain or squeeze a mantis: its legs and abdomen are delicate in ways that are not obvious by looking.

Handle only in a closed room, sitting down, over a table or a bed. Mantises jump, and the winged adults of most commonly kept species fly, so an animal that startles off a hand can cross the room in one motion. An open door or window turns that slip into a search, and a low seat keeps any drop short.

When to Leave It Alone

Avoid handling in the days before a molt. Molting problems are the most common cause of death in captive mantises, and the warning comes early: a mantis stops eating for a day or two before it sheds. One that has stopped eating and hangs unusually still is getting ready to shed, which is normal and not a sign of illness, and it should be left completely alone until the new exoskeleton has hardened. Handling during that window raises the risk of a failed or fatal molt. A freshly molted mantis is soft for the first hours and should not be touched either.

Telling Males from Females

Count the segments on the underside of the abdomen. A male has eight, a female six. The count is clearest on a subadult or adult hanging upside down, when the underside faces you, and a phone photo zoomed in makes the counting easy without touching the animal at all.

Size is a supporting clue once it is older: adult females are the bigger, heavier animal, an African mantis female reaching about 8 cm against the male's 6 to 7. Sex matters to a keeper for two reasons: females live longer, and only a female will lay an ootheca, mated or not.

First-Timer Mistakes

• Handling often just because the mantis tolerates it
• Handling during the pre-molt stillness, or right after a molt
• Handling standing up, in an open room, where a jump turns into a long fall or a lost mantis
• Putting two mantises together, even briefly, since mantises are cannibals and are kept one to an enclosure

How This Compares to Stick Insects

Mantises are sometimes grouped with stick insects as delicate climbing insects, but the comparison only goes so far. Stick insects are herbivores that can often be kept together in groups. Mantises are predatory and cannibalistic, which is the whole reason they live alone. It is a different kind of fragility again from a tarantula, where a fall can rupture the abdomen, but all three end up as look-more-than-touch animals.

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Sources & Further Reading