page_title: Mantis
section_title: As pets
hierarchical_section_title: Mantis / Relationship with humans / As pets
caption_attribution_description: English: Gray adult female Carolina Mantis on my hand.
context_page_description: Mantises are an order of insects that contains over 2,400 species in about 430 genera in 15 families. The largest family is the Mantidae. Mantises are distributed worldwide in temperate and tropical habitats. They have triangular heads with bulging eyes supported on flexible necks. Their elongated bodies may or may not have wings, but all Mantodea have forelegs that are greatly enlarged and adapted for catching and gripping prey; their upright posture, while remaining stationary with forearms folded, has led to the common name praying mantis.
  The closest relatives of mantises are the termites and cockroaches, which are all within the superorder Dictyoptera. Mantises are sometimes confused with stick insects, other elongated insects such as grasshoppers, or other unrelated insects with raptorial forelegs such as mantisflies. Mantises are mostly ambush predators, but a few ground-dwelling species are found actively pursuing their prey. They normally live for about a year. In cooler climates, the adults lay eggs in autumn, then die. The eggs are protected by their hard capsules and hatch in the spring.
context_section_description: Mantises are among the insects most widely kept as pets. Because the lifespan of a mantis is only about a year, people who want to keep mantises often breed them. In 2013 at least 31 species were kept and bred in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States.  In 1996 at least 50 species were known to be kept in captivity by members of the Mantis Study Group. The Independent described the "giant Asian praying mantis" as "part stick insect with a touch of Buddhist monk", and stated that they needed a vivarium around 30 cm (12 in) on each side. The Daily South argued that a pet insect was no weirder than a pet rat or ferret, and that while a pet mantis was unusual, it would not "bark, shed, [or] need shots or a litter box".
caption: Gray adult female Carolina mantis in human hand
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