This seems to have been a very good year for praying mantids in our garden.  I stumbled across this green-eyed male as I picked okra for our supper on Thursday.  Can you believe how full his belly is?

No one else on the internet seems to believe that eye color is a good way to tell male and female praying mantids apart, so it's possible the field marks I noted on my mating mantises were just a fluke.  If for some reason you really need to know if your mantid is male or female, count how many segments are in the abdomen.  Males have 8 segments (though sometimes only 7 are visible) while females have 6 (though sometimes only 5 are visible.)  My okra mantis passed both the green-eye and the 8 segment test, so he's definitively male.

Want more in-depth information? Browse through our books.

Or explore more posts by date or by subject.

About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



Want to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.

Powered by Branchable Wiki Hosting.