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Picspam: Mantids

I was recently asked to share pictures of my mantises rather than my spiders for a change (apparently my friends aren't as fond of the wee little beasties as I am, go figure!) I am always happy to oblige with pictures of my critters, regardless of what they are, so here are pictures of Sykes, Catchy, and Tyson. Unfortunately I lost Evander, my second flower mantis, recently. He went through a period of refusing to eat. No matter how many fruit flies I dropped into his enclosure, he just wasn't interested, and he passed right before I left for Amsterdam. I am obviously very disappointed, but this is nature and I tried my best. This is why mantises have so many babies - some of them just don't survive, it's called "failure to thrive".

Sykes is my dead leaf mantis, Deroplatys desiccata. He's had two or three molts since I got him, but his rate of growth is so slow that I barely notice the difference at the moment. He's not much bigger than when I first got him, and he's certainly not growing as fast as Catchy. His favourite food are fruitflies, and he loves when I spritz him with water. He's not very sociable though, and doesn't really appreciate being handled.
Catchy is my favourite mantis. She's a giant Asian mantis, Hierodula membranacea. I am always amazed at how fast she grows with each molt. When I got her she was about the same size as Sykes is now, and she's molted maybe every four to six weeks since I got her before Christmas. She's definitely my favourite mantis because she likes to be handled, she likes to come out and say hello. She enjoys watching people and is very curious. She started out on fruit flies when I first got her, then moved up to green bottles. Now she happily takes crickets and locusts.
Finally Tyson my Yunnan flower mantis, Creoboter yunnan. Like Sykes, Tyson also seems to be growing very slowly. She has had a number of molts now, and does not seem to be that much bigger than when she arrived. She is also on fruit flies, though she will eat four or five in a row, so I am about to try and upgrade her to green bottles. She is more amenable to being handled, though she doesn't like it as much as Catchy does. She has been known to leap from my hands onto a nearby wall though.
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