Customer Reviews

Discovery Exclusive Praying Mantis Encounter

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I am here to buy our SECOND habitat. This habitat is so awesome. We hatched our Praying Mantis eggs in March 2008 and I am now trying to mate a male and a female so that we can do the process all over again. I need a second habitat so I can keep the male and female apart until they are nice a full. The egg cases can be purchased at Home Depot in the garden section in the Spring time (you don't have to mail away for them). Then, when the hatch, you call your local pet store and order nymph crickets, then as they get bigger you can give them flightless fruitflies (also at the pet store), and now, our little guys are BIG (about 5 inches long) and eat full size crickets. Our family has had a BLAST raising these amazing creatures. DO IT! Just make sure to do your research on how to create the best habitat... actually this habitat comes with a pretty informative booklet. Good luck!

Very cool, actually. The first egg case that came with the habitat did not hatch, waited weeks to re-order from another vendor selling on-line gardening supplies - the egg cases were MUCH cheaper and these did hatch quickly. Left the lid open the one night that they did hatch and had 200 baby mantes all over my kitchen, that was fun catching them indeed...all in all, you get a plastic habitat for the $$$. Do your self a huge favor...order the egg cases on-line from a gardening supply house, buy the live food at Petco, and keep them in a terarium.

This habitat is lots of fun! My 8 year old is very into science and was quite pleased to find this under the tree last Christmas. After purchasing the habitat, you must then send off for the praying mantis is the cocoon. This takes a couple of weeks. Once you receive the kit, it takes between 10-14 days for the "babies" to hatch. I was quite surprised at the large number that hatched (around 60-70)! Imagine waking up one morning to 70 crawling bugs! The bugs are contained, but I suggest you purchase food or be willing to catch A LOT of bugs to keep the praying mantises from eating each other! (Yes this happened to us) and we still had some to "let go" a week or two later! My son took them to school and all the teachers were amazed, as they had never seen a habitat for praying mantis!

Amazingly overpriced. The description makes it sound like the egg cases are included in the price, but need to be mailed seperately - well they aren't, and that will set you back a few more bucks.

Read the reviews on the discovery channel site, and you will learn how hard it is to raise them in this, and it isn't even appropriate for just hatched mantises because it is too big and they can't catch thier food, so they eat each other.

When I tried to cancel 2 hours after purchase, discovery told me the order was "already in procees" so I couldn't - but I was welcome to return it (at my own cost). I cut my losses, kept it, and got egg cases locally. We will hatch the eggs outside, and catch some mantisis when they get larger to put in.

This was alot of fun. The only thing my kids didn't like was they had to catch real bugs to feed it. The butterfly one was easier. But the praying manthis is beautiful. We still see him around every once in awhile.

My niece was so excited about this gift. She is a bug fanatic! I ordered the praying mantis egg sack from a company they listed. Talk about excited when they hatched! We then let them go in the landscaping and neighbors garden. What an educational experience for her. She learned more with this hands on toy.

My son got this for his birthday this spring. First of all, you are paying $20 for a flimsy net enclosure. Second, you have to send away and pay extra for the praying mantises but when you do, they come two weeks later in a test tube with fruit flies and you have to wait another 8 weeks for the mantis eggs to mature. You have to put water on them every few days and nurture the fruit flies. The eggs never did mature despite us carefully following the instructions and soon the fruit flies died. My six and seven year olds were very disappointed by our 10 week science experiment that never did a darn thing.