yes pray mantis eat the chrysalis as well, i caught one in the act!
Thanks for the help. I have 1 last caterpillar to go (nearly ready to form the chrysalis) & the suggestions will help to be successful I hope. I have to have them inside cause there are a lot of praying mantis’s around here & they seem to love the caterpillars. I am not sure if they will go for the chrysalis or not but better safe than sorry. Will do the misting thing when they get close to hatching & hopefully that will help
Cheers
Bryan Batty
Good point, Leslie. I actually mist mine from time to time and have a sodden cotton ball in with them.
oh and something else to be wary of when keeping chrysalids inside is keep them away from direct sunlight. I learnt the hard way that direct sunlight acts to dry the chrysalis and you get black spots forming … a few of those and the butterfly is likely to have trouble shedding the chrysalis/ inflating its wings, or in the worst case of sun exposure it effectively cooks the butterfly and it dies. Usually when the butterfly dies the chrysalis just goes black and no colours can be seen unless of course they die very close to emerging.
sounds like they have died. Once they go black, and you can see their colours clearly its usually 12 ours more or less before they emerge… when the gold dots around the top go black its imminent. This time of year presents extra challenges, disease is more prevalent and sometimes the butterfly is just too weak to emerge and dies. I’ve helped a couple of weak ones out of their chrysalis but typically they can’t even hang on to anything and their wings don’t inflate. And sometimes of course the butterfly just dies before emerging. We can only do our best for them and celebrate every one that does make it :).
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