Hatching usually takes between 3 and 6 months. The young may hatch all at once or in batches over a period of several weeks. Young Mantids like young Cockroaches, Grasshoppers and Crickets hatch as a pronymph surrounded by a protective membrane within which they move like grubs to the surface of the ootheca. In some species there is a single exit tube along the bottom of the ootheca from which the young Mantids emerge individually, in others the young emerge through the oothecae wall nearest there particular egg cell and hang suspended from the ootheca on a silken cord secreted by a pair of papillae on the lower side 10th abdominal segment. They rapidly escape their protective case and climb up the silken cord to the ootheca.
Young Mantids are extremely active and disperse rapidly from the vicinity of the ootheca.
Though many are caught and eaten by ants or fall prey to spiders and other predators at this stage or while they are still struggling with there protective hatching suits, they soon become the predators and take to standing still waiting for their prey to come to them. Praying Mantids are renowned for the females tendency to eat the male during copulation, and though this does not occur in all species, many smaller species such as Ameles spallanzania are not cannibalistic at all, in some species it is obligatory and the male can not pass on the spermatophore containing his sperm until he has had his head removed. Some study has been done on Mantis religiosa the common European Mantid which suggests that some of the time at least the female attacks and eats the male simple because she fails to recognise him. The male is capable of successfully mating with the female after his head has been removed because copulatory activity is under the control of his last abdominal ganglion and thus is either not effected by, or, in cases where the sub-oesophageal ganglion of the head secretes inhibitory substances, is actually stimulated by the removal of his head. The Suborder Mantodea is divided into 8 families of which 3, Chaeteesidae, Metallycidae, and Mantoididae contain only one small genus, and 1, the Mantidae, contains the majority of the species.