George/Maya update

[COOCOpUcHoo]

So George/Maya seems to be doing very well, but when I check on her/him, sometimes his/her pupils are very tiny. My light is a 13 watt UVB. Also, I have never witnessed her eat in so long, I don't know if she is shy, or if she is not eating. I honey bathed her and her skin she was about to molt fell of and she had a tiny poo. Also I just got a new praying mantis. If anyone knows how to care for them facts and info would be nice. I witnessed him/her eat twice and (s)he molted once already. (S)He is housed in a jar that is about 1.5 gallons. The mantis is about 3 inches across.

[DVirginiana]

If the light in the room is on for you to see, that's enough to make their pupils constrict. Sometimes even in high light the pupils will dilate if they get overly stressed or excited (such as when they are about to pounce on prey). Generally, they're nocturnal, so it doesn't take a lot of light to make their pupils small.

For the mantis, a jar doesn't have enough ventilation for most things. Get a small critter-keeper or something, use eco-earth as substrate. Find some twigs and bake them at 350 degrees for 15 minutes in your oven (to kill parasites and bugs) and put those in there. They need something to climb. Also, most inverts don't actually drink, so you need to keep the environment hydrated. Mist well at least once a day. Desiccation is one of the biggest causes of death in inverts.
I've never kept mantises, but I have kept millipedes for several years.