nmoasis said:I am no expert. There are several identifiers for sex: size, shape, wing length, number of body segments, antennae development...those are the more obvious ones. Based on what I can see, I'd say male. Here's one article that might help if you get a closer look at it
https://praying-mantis.org/mal...

I am thinking male too now that you shared the link. Unfortunately, this was last year, so he is long gone. But man, a female of his species would of been a sight to see, he was huge!

The male Chinese? mantis I saw in one of my MG projects was at least 6 to 7 inches long, easily the biggest male I've ever seen. Definite about it being a male, not so sure if it was Chinese.

gardenfish said:The male Chinese? mantis I saw in one of my MG projects was at least 6 to 7 inches long, easily the biggest male I've ever seen. Definite about it being a male, not so sure if it was Chinese.

Unfortunately, my picture and memory aren't the clearest, but it does look like they live in Georgia.

I'm thinking the Chinese is all over the country now, due to the fact that most, of not all egg cases sold on the Internet are Chinese.

@Joannakat caught this terrific article from NPR from 2016. Timely, to say the least.

https://www.npr.org/sections/t....

I had to take my son to the ear doc yesterday. It was rather windy, and when we got back home the wind had blown over my avocado tree, and it was hanging over the porch. Evidently there was one of my big preggers female mantises on it and she fell off onto the porch right next to the outside cats cat food. The little white kitten had her backed up and she had her outer and inner wings spread wide and was clearly in the attack mode. Boy, was she mad! I scooted the kitten out of the way and rescued her. She climbed onto my hand and I placed her back on the righted avocado.

Giving you a round of applause for saving the day!

gardenfish said:It was rather windy, and when we got back home the wind had blown over my avocado tree, and it was hanging over the porch.

Lynda ~ Was your porch damaged by the tree?

...or worse, was the avocado tree damaged by the porch?!?

Yay on the rescue Lynda!

YAY for rescuing your mantis friend.

Zoe, I love that picture what a poser! it looks like mantis has a hand on hip!

nmoasis said:...or worse, was the avocado tree damaged by the porch?!?

No damage to the porch, and just some minor leaf damage on the tree. It needs a bigger pot, which I need to do right away. The biggest pain will be getting it in the car to take it to a friends house to spend the winter in her heated greenhouse. It's nearly ten feet tall.

Y'all look at this male mantis. A very prickly place to be!

Another mantis on a cactus!? Awesome photo, Lynda!

Thanks!

I didn't notice the mantis until I downloaded the photo but there she is on the left.

Photo bomb!

How cool! Kind of like when I took a pic of a mantis and didn't notice the prey he was stalking until I looked at the pic later.

Found this little guy this morning on an indoor plant. We've been doing some demo on our flooring and have had the doors open for good portions of the day, so I bet he snuck in then. I have stuck the plant outside for now so he can gently go back outside. 😃

Ha! That must have been a surprise. He looks like he's wearing wrinkly bloomers in that top photo. Interesting angle.

After encountering PMs almost every day all summer, I haven't seen a single one for about three weeks. I hope it's seasonal attrition and not any kind of misadventure before egg-laying. So here are some from earlier:

Out for a climb
Who needs a hammock?