The mantid Diego I

Okay, so Diego’s a female.

We counted eight abdominal segments when Diego was a nymph, so we took a risk and named it a him even though we knew that we could really only tell when it reached maturity. We also knew that creatures should be its, but it’s got too much character to be called an it.

We thought Diego was going to explode. A month had gone by without him her undergoing ecdysis, yet she was still eating and growing. Her little wing buds looked as if they would burst at the seams any minute.

A couple of days ago, I transferred her into a bigger container, increased the humidity with a ball of wet wool, and provided her with some fibrous twine to hang upside down from.

Today in the afternoon, she moulted.

I watched, entranced, for an hour.

Right after she slipped out of her old exoskeleton – which took but less than five minutes, I took her out in her teneral state and placed her on a potted plant, letting the breeze dry her new wings, then still damp and clumped.

I observed the process of her transformation into full adult form as body fluids were pumped into her fragile and new structures. She lost a tarsus in her previous instar during a struggle with a grasshopper prey, but the lost appendage had regenerated in this final moult. After her cuticles hardened, she started grooming herself in her characteristic mantid way, brushing antennae and femurs with her mandibles and wiping her face like a cat does.

She’s so pretty…

Not entirely certain what species Diego is (this looks like a good fit), but we’re quite sure these are the males of her species, with handsome black forelegs and roach-like long antennae.