Holding a Huge Mantis (video )

[justinl]

whoa, no. bad, no. never touch anything that's just molted; that is a surefire way to kill any crustacean. Molting is a wicked stressful event and the best thing you can do is just leave it alone for a couple days. Actually Dr Roy Caldwell of Berkeley (the finger in my previous post belongs to this guy) had a mantis strike at him right after a molt and the action actually made the arm of the creature sort of... explode. Such immense energy goes into the strike that if the carapace isn't hard, it will essentially break the mantis' musculature.