# Live Food Care: Earthworms, Sowbugs, Wild-Caught Insects, others



## findi (Mar 25, 2012)

Hi All,
I’ve covered a number of less-commonly kept food animals in this care guide, along with pet trade staples.  Please consider as many as you can, as dietary variety is critical to the health of most pets.  The extra effort on your part will be very worthwhile…novel foods also inspire enthusiastic feeding responses, and may even stimulate reproduction.  Read article here:  http://blogs.thatpetplace.com/thatr...ptile-amphibian-tarantula-and-scorpion-diets/
Comments and questions appreciated, 

Thanks, Frank

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Reactions: Like 1


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## axle37 (Mar 25, 2012)

findi said:


> Hi All,
> I’ve covered a number of less-commonly kept food animals in this care guide, along with pet trade staples.  Please consider as many as you can, as dietary variety is critical to the health of most pets.  The extra effort on your part will be very worthwhile…novel foods also inspire enthusiastic feeding responses, and may even stimulate reproduction.  Read article here:  http://blogs.thatpetplace.com/thatr...ptile-amphibian-tarantula-and-scorpion-diets/
> Comments and questions appreciated,
> Thanks, Frank
> ...


Hey Frank. I like your cite. I have a small question. What if i occasionally fed my Emperor Scorp. a small minnow?


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## findi (Mar 25, 2012)

axle37 said:


> Hey Frank. I like your cite. I have a small question. What if i occasionally fed my Emperor Scorp. a small minnow?


Hi,

Thanks for the kind words. While its a great idea to provide scorpions with a highly-varied diet as opposed to crickets alone, I would not suggest using minnows.  It would be extremely unlikely that the 2 would ever meet in the wild; emperors may not be able to digest fish properly, even if they were accepted.  Please see this article for some suggestions on varying the diet, and let me know if you have any questions or ideas.  Best,  Frank


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## cacoseraph (Mar 25, 2012)

i'd be pretty careful about actually feeding wild caught bugs to your other pet bugs.  i've seen parisitoids crawl out of caterpillars, crickets, and something else that i can't recall right now... a spider or beetle or something. considering i've only ever taken less than 100 total feeder type bugs home that seems like pretty high odds. also, things like mites and other tiny bugs are not uncommon on wild critters. plus, a lot of taxo groups have some species that are poisonous or have repugnatorial secretions or other chemical defenses and some that you don't exactly have to worry about.  my experience is most hobbiests are not great at keying out their pet species, much less more subtle stuff like some of the local feeder type species.   

let's talk about bioaccumulation.  since some of our pet bugs can live multiple decades they have a long time to accumulate certain toxins.  some stuff they can more or less metabolize or otherwise get rid of but some stuff stays in them for quite a while.  it is very possible to have local species of feeder type bugs that are not as senstive to pesticides or other toxins that they eat or come in contact with yield up enough bad stuff over time to negatively affect our pets. a lot of native herbivore species are more tolerant to some of the local plant species that are slightly to highly toxic than our pets would be.  they actually use this as a form of defense.  somewhat similarily, a lot of species that are considered pests for one reason or another are combatted with pesticides.  as generations progress only the most tolerant individuals pass their genes along, producing even more tolerant specimens.  so they can be loaded with a surprising amount of pesticide and not really exhibit any symptoms

pathogens are also something to consider.  somewhat similar to the reason visitors are not supposed to drink the water in mexico but mexicans get along more or less fine on it, local bugs can have a certain degree of immunity to their pathogen load that exotic bugs are not likely to possess.  generally these types of immunities are only present in animals that have grown up in an area.  whether they are passed on from their mom or developed growing up, our pet bugs are not going to have the opportunity for either.  and rest assured (or not, mwahahaa) bugs have every bit as rich of like, pathogenicity as humans.  it is basically guaranteed that any bug you bring in from the wild has multiple pathogens on or in it.  further on the pathogen problem, feeding random wild caught bugs is a good way to introduce mold, fungus, and other spore based flora into your pet bugs' habitats.  this probably won't be a deadly problem, but a moist, warm captive habitat is a great place for a mold bloom to happen, then you are stuck resubbing the cage at the very least


some worms are a pain if you feed them out in at all warm weather and they are not eaten right away. they melt and foul the dirt. it would be important to either feed in a different container, feed when it's colder (though this seriously decreased a lot of common pet bugs' feeding response), or make for dang sure you are only using more heat tolerant species.


however, i am always on the look out for new species to culture and use as supplemental feeders.   with a fair amount of research and effort it is likely there are tons of awesome new feeder species out there


oh, and because we don't know any of our pet bugs nutrional requirements we can't exactly say that one bug is more nutritious than another.  it is well demonstrated that using cultured crickets or roaches (both generally broad omnivores) as a staple or sole food source is sustainable for multiple generations for many of our pet species... but it is also likely that occasionally supplementing other cultured bugs as feeders might round out some random nutrients that a bug might be somewhat deficient in


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## findi (Mar 25, 2012)

Hello,

Thanks for your interest and comment.  

As mentioned in the article, it is important to learn to identify toxic and otherwise dangerous species, and to avoid areas subjected to pesticides.  

However, parasite and pesticide concerns can be abated; during my tenure at the Bronx Zoo it was (and remains) standard practice to trap invertebrates as food items for a variety or reptiles, invertebrates and amphibians, many quite rare.  All herps (but not invertebrates) in the collection were given necropsies; secondary poisoning/parasite transmission was not documented.  Please see this 2 Part article for further information:http://blogs.thatpetplace.com/thatr...-as-reptile-and-amphibian-food-some-concerns/

Best,  Frank


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## cacoseraph (Mar 25, 2012)

that's cool and all, but this is a website primarily for invertebrate pet keepers and everything i have seen in your articles as specific instances of this being a good idea was regarding vertebrate species.  and you say you don't do necropsies on dead inverts.    just doing a bit of googling as one of the creepies i saw crawl out of a cricket was a horsehair worm.  they are interesting and i think anyone looking at any sort of hardcore wild caught feeding regimen for their inverts should learn about them

" If this host host is eaten by a definitive host (such as when a praying mantis eats an infected mayfly) the parasitic larva emerges and enters the gut of its final host. Cysts can survive even in if a temporary host dies, and if scavengers feed on the dead tissues, the cysts can be passed into the new host by that route."
http://www.eoearth.org/article/Nematomorpha


so, not only do you need to make sure the species you are thinking about feeding to your inverts are not themselves toxic or potentially feed on toxic plants, you need to make sure they aren't a possible temporary host to something like these horsehair worms.  the interesting thing is that the temporary hosts can be just about anything because all the horsehair does is get inside and encyst up. it doesn't actually feed off the temporary host, so the requirements are very minimal


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## findi (Mar 25, 2012)

Good points all; we have a great deal to learn, research as well as experience all come into play; necropsies per say were not done on invertebrates, but indications of parasitic infection, apparent pesticide poisoning would have been noted.  The article is written with vertebrates and invertebrates in mind, as indicated. Variety does seem to be more important re herp diets, although it's hard to judge with inverts, given our limited knowledge.  As you mentioned earlier, some do fine on limited diets; some that I've worked with did not, but the reasons were not always clear, best,  Frank


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