Praying Mantis Egg Sack –

Praying Mantis Egg Sack –

Praying Mantis mating usually happens during the fall.  After the female has her eggs fertilized by a male she lays between 10 to 400 of them.  The eggs are laid in frothy pile on a secure structure like a tree or a building.  The pile hardens, and turns into a rigid egg sack called an ‘ootheca’.

This egg sack has been deposited on a sandhill plum tree.  I find these things everywhere.  I have found them on all sorts of trees, and on the bottom of a table once.  The eggs stay dormant all winter, and then hatch in the spring.  The ootheca feels really hard and bumpy and can survive any kind of cold or wet weather.

Something kind of crazy happens when all the baby mantises are born in the spring.  If there aren’t enough insects for all the hundreds of brothers and sisters to eat…they start eating each other!  I’ve never watched this happen, but it would be interesting to observe insect cannibals.