Do mealworms pose a threat to my mantis?

[Darwock]

I understood they were fairly standard food for mantids.. however when I gave my young mantis (about one inch long, no wings) a mealworm for dinner it was clearly afraid - he was walking slowly AWAY from it, then when it moved suddenly he would scarper to the other side of the tank.

This puzzled me so I read up about mealworms and it says they can be dangerous for lizards (their jaws are strong enough to eat through the animal's stomach). I'm sure that won't happen cos the mantis chews it up into very tiny pieces... however I'm worried it might curl around and take a chunk out of my mantis while it is being eaten.

Anyhow, why do other mantids eat mealworms but mine won't?

It took me two hours to catch a single small butterfly so I need to find a better source of food.

 

[Newports]

Order some flightless fly cultures. I think most of them are very small fruit flys but you can find bigger ones. I doubt the meal worm could hurt your mantis with its fast reflexes and what not. Try ripping meal worms head off then with a tweezer or finger, hold the headless worm near the mantis' mouth.

good luck

 

[echostatic]

the whole mealworm eating through a lizards stomach thing is a myth. if it survives being swallowed, the stomach acid kills it. depending on the size of your mantis you could get some melanogaster or d.hydei flightless fruitflies. if its too big for that, you could feed small crickets. i really dont recommend feeding mealworms to anything, they are mostly chitin shell, a poor nutritional feeder.

 

[Darwock]

An update on my little mantis - I continued to feed him butterflies until he had molted once, and then he was big enough that I could start giving him crickets. He ate these happily for a couple of weeks - every time I dropped one in his (rather large) tank he would scoot down off the ceiling and catch it immediately, taking it back up to his favourite spot on the roof to eat.

Then I had to go on holiday, so he was given to a friend to look after together with a supply of crickets. They were instructed to feed him one every two days, as this was about the most he could digest at the time.

On my return I was told that he had molted the day after I left, and now he had his wings. He had been very hungry after molting so he had been eating one cricket a day - great!

I now have him back in my posession, but the odd thing is that he isn't really eating much at all. When I put a cricket in his tank he just looks at it - he doesn't run after it the way he used to. If one strays within range he will eat it, but he doesn't chase them any more. I've gone back to giving him butterflies, because they are the only thing that he will definitely catch (because they fly right in his face).

Right now in fact, I am in the process of cleaning his tank so I've transferred him to a small holding tank, and chucked the cricket (that has been keeping him company, uneaten, for about three days) in with him. He had a snap at it when it got close, but it got away and he hasn't bothered to try again. I'm worried

Should I be?

 

[PhilK]

It took me two hours to catch a single small butterfly so I need to find a better source of food.

Crickets or woodies. Easy. Pinhead crickets if your mantis is a tiny nymph.

Mine doesn't look at mealworms either, not even small ones.

 

[Darwock]

Glad to know it's not just mine, thanks - actually the problem has changed since the initial post (I wanted to change the thread title but couldn't find the edit option!) - see my latest post for the details.

He's stopped eating again - it's not dehydration cos I'm misting the tank and I've seen him licking the water off... it's not molting cos he already has his wings... I read somewhere on the net that adult male mantids care about mating more than eating so maybe it's some kind of stress related effect from being in captivity?

I have just noticed that he has trouble clinging to the plastic walls of his tank - he can't get a sure footing and actually fell off twice - he never had this problem before either. He's only able to cling happily to the roof (different plastic), which might explain why he doesn't hunt the crickets down anymore?

It's a problem cos the crickets I bought are eating each other faster than he is eating them! (guess they don't like my cucumber so much)

 

[Warren Bautista]

Sorry to tell you this, but, your mantis has probably matured when he sprouted those wings and he is nearing the end of his life cycle. In other words, he is gonna die. He doesn't chase crickets around any more because he is conserving his energy *Taps playing in the background*.

 

[Darwock]

Sorry to tell you this, but, your mantis has probably matured when he sprouted those wings and he is nearing the end of his life cycle. In other words, he is gonna die. He doesn't chase crickets around any more because he is conserving his energy *Taps playing in the background*.

Really? I thought they typically lived for around a year? He was pretty young when I found him so I thought he'd have a lot left in him.. if it's the natural end then I don't feel so bad about it, at least it's not my fault... maybe I should let him go to try and find a mate before he dies?

Any second opinions?

 

[kaisertown]

I wouldn't worry about him dying. All the mantids I have kept eat considerably less after maturing. 2 crickets per week (depending on the size of the crickets) should be all he needs to happily live out his remaining few months. My mantids have usually lived into late fall.

If he is having trouble making his way from the top to the bottom of the container, you can try to add more sticks, bark or fake plants. Another thing you can do is put duct tape or something that will stick to the plastic and offer something that the mantis can climb up on the other side. Sometimes you have to get creative with stuff like that. you could even glue something with a sandpaper type texture to the side of the enclosure too. It would not only allow the mantis to climb down, but the crickets might climb up towards the mantis too.

 

[PhilK]

Sounds like he is either keen to breed, and therefore doesn't care about hunting or he is nearing the end of his life.

When someone says they live for a year, this is only a general figure. If you feed him heaps and heaps the life span will be much shorter as he grew much faster.