going to the source...animal styles, studyinging them again, growing praying mantises

Wai Jia: The Kung Fu Forum Kung Fu Forum
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First off, I have lot of bugs here, second, I want to grow one of those big praying mantises and play with it like wong long did.

Have any of you watches a mantis hunt? Or whatever your animal style is?

Well it don’t kickbox! It stays perfectly still and in the blink of an eye has captured its prey and eats it.

Where can I buy reliable eggs for the biggest mantises there are? Any ideas?

Ralek had an interesting observation that bjj works like an animal style and he was right. Maybe we get caught up in the techniques and lose the spirit of our style that makes it great.

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My girlfriend works for a wholesale reptile supplier, and they get Mantises in on a semi regular basis. they wholesale between $8-$15, and we can probually get you one for $20 a piece plus shipping. They have a life span of about 3-6 months in captivity.

We had one live almost a year, but we got it very young.

E-mail me if your serious at royaldragon@netzero.net

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Royal you should post that on the pm forum, i want one of those but i prolly wont get around to actually getting one!.

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Oh yeah riiight

If I post this on the PM forum, I’ll have orders for a hundred of them silly bugs.

I’d have to talk it over with Terri first, and make sure she can get them in volume ahead of time before I do something like that. Also, I’d have to double check the prices as the fluctuate depending on avaliability.

I can also get Luber Grass hoppers, like the HUGE grasshopper from the TV Show Kung Fu with David Carradine. These babys are as big or bigger than a Bic cigarette lighter, NOT counting the wings and legs. These are TOTALLY cool, and run anywhere from $50-$75 a piece. Carefull, they Jump like you wouldn’t believe!!!:smiley:

Shipping is costly for single units though, as I have to overnight them no matter what the distance because they are live animals. In winter, it costs even more because they are shipped with Chemical heat packs to prevent freezing.

Her work ships THOUSANDS of lizzars, snakes, turtles, spiders scorpions etc out to the Pet stores of the US every day. What we would do, is order them for ourselves through her work, and repack them to be shipped back out to you guys the same day after they have been fed and watered. It would be no garantee on live delivery, but generally 95% make it through shipping healthy and sound.

We would need cash up front in order to place the order with her boss’s suppliers as they work on a Cash only basis for small orders (1000 units or less). Her company usually orders 5000 units at a time covering several dozen spicies per order. One speicies (Mantis bugs) ordered in lots of 100 would cost more, than say ordering 350 Manits bugs plus 600 Tokay gecko’s, 200 corn snakes, 650 Leapard gecko’s, 450 Blue Toung Skinks, 1200 baby Red Tail boa constricters, 125 Hermit Crabs etc…

If we were to work smaller orders like lots of 15-25, we would have to wait untill he was buying for his regular customers, and tack our order onto his big one, so it may be a timeing issue as well.

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Do those grasshoppers scrap?, seems a bit expensive just to watch something hop…I can do that for free, isit generally only usa orders?.

On another note i sapr all the time with my female cat, you have to flick at her like ten times, eventually she gets all coiled then when you flick she starts deflecting and countering, you go with the same action as tikling a babe- flick at her right then hit the left!, thier total little hungga/wingchun fighting machines, she heavily uses a paksao/pawing trap action its hilarious cuz when she gets tired she will like hold my hand down and it so looks like slapping hand form:cool:

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Just so you know, I searched on Preying Mantis at ebay and came up with a couple of guys auctioning the critters off…

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May I point out that praying mantises are less active in captivity than in their natural surroundings.

So forget the short-cuts and head out to Mother nature to study them in their native environs.

Peace.

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Goofy question: is it really “praying mantis” and not “preying mantis”? They seem to be a lot more into hunting than worship…

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CSN.

The name was given by a priest that thought the forelegs looked like hands held in prayer, and the still sitting posture.

Peace.

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Okay, then! But you understand the source of my confusion.

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I can understand it.

But than Christians gave many things weird names.

Peace

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Now you’ve got me wondering what ‘tong long’ really means. Sure, praying mantis, but did the chinese look at these bugs and say “how pious!” just like the europeans? Seems unlikely…

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Tang has no other maning in Chinese. Lang was used only in insects’ name, such as ZhangLang–****roach.

If you took away the bug side of Tang, what was left is also called Tang, it means the palace or the main hall.

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I keep a lot of exotic reptiles and I have a african #9 flower mantid nymph. It is white with some greenish stripes and has spikes all over its abdomen. It is very cool looking. They are not very common and are at least $15. If you are looking for a large mantid you can order some chinese mantid oothecas(egg cases)for cheap from nurseries or gardening suppliers, but you would have to raise them to adulthood, or release them in your yard if the climate is good.

RD, who does your girlfriend work for, and can she get orchid mantids?

Preying and praying are both recognized as correct but I believe that praying is the original term. Mantis is a greek word(I think) that means a sage.

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orchid mantids

I asked her, she says they are hard to find, not common to the pet trade. She’s going to ask if they are avaliable for you tomorrow though.

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finding a foot long chinese praying mantis in the wilds of NorthEastern America is a little bit impossible. My only hope is to buy one or grow them, keep them in a meshed area in the yard and provide enough bugs so that they don’t run away from home.

I tried with the egg cases a couple of years ago, but I think birds got to them…the rest were duds.

I would love to do like wong long and poke them with stuff…don’t tell peta…fcuck peta. Anyways I think it would help with my fighting.

Look at praying mantis boxing…does it look anything like a mantis hunts? If not, are you doing it right?

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Chang my better friend is buying a burner on the weekend my other friend is a sellout as i cauitioned on how long those cds will take. I will send you a list of possible mixes you may like soon in my next emial"i’m here now:) " Can you hook your burner upto mp3?, he’s getting a comburner so i could send more on mp3 through emial!, if you have the hookup?.
Peace

back to those ****ing ****aroaches:D
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Just a flip side to the discussion…

I owned a praying mantis a few years ago, and thought it would be cool to watch (in relation to kung fu). The thing really did my head in though! Keeping the crickets was a nightmare - they kept on escaping - and in the end I felt more empathy for them than the mantis I was feeding them to. It felt so gladitorial, and the mantis, for me, just became a monster that I realised couldn’t even live with it’s own kind (at least the crickets could live together in harmony)! I gave it to a friend in the end as I couldn’t have anything more to do it.

Don’t get me wrong though - they are amazing creatures, but I’ll leave where they belong…in the wild.

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diego - i spar with my cat too… he has the best reflexes ive seen. hes a sucker for the old feint up the centre, then same hand back and around in a circular motion - he always over commits onto batting the first one aside, leaving himself wide open… kinda the same problem i have. hes not too good at countering me - instead he just claws the crap out of my hand.

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Paul - Thanks for the information!

Diego - I’d prefer ‘regular format’ CDs, so I can play them on my home stereo, discman, and so on. Also, I’m stuck on dialup for the moment, so emailing mp3s isn’t really possible. I only run Audiogalaxy while I’m asleep or otherwise away from the computer. Soon, I hope to move to broadband, as soon as I start earning a little closer to what I deserve.

Ged - you might want to start wearing gardening gloves when you spar with your cat.

Everyone else - sorry for the offtopic diversion. To make up for it, here’s a story from my kidhood.

I lived in a hippie co-op house with my parents, brother, and about six people I barely remember now. We had an open porch with a potted coffee plant on it that was a magnet for some kind of plant chewing bugs. So somehow we got hold of a mantis, tied a teensy leash to a back leg, and had a little guard bug for it. It died after a little while, and we moved the plant into the living room to protect it from wild insects. But, unbeknownst to anyone it was a she-mantis and had laid an egg sac someplace, so a short time later our living room was full of tiny, kid’s fingernail size mantises. I don’t remember if we just let nature run it’s course, or if someone killed them, or if they tried to hustle them outdoors. Considering the hippies that lived there, I’ll bet it was the last one.