Hi all,
Brand new to the forum and the world of bugs and stuff! I recently captured a Western Short Horned Walking Stick (Parabacillus Hesperus). I have never kept an insect before and started to read up on them. Since learning more, I have become quite interested in these little creatures. However, I'm a little concerned about the well being of the little guy I captured.
This little guy was hanging out on my screen door for two days. I was reading up on them the whole time and decided to hold onto him for a little while. He only has 4 legs, I've read that they will grow back though. He kind of struggles to climb around the habitat I made him, but gets around ok. My real concern is that I only saw this guy eating once. It looked like he was chomping on the bark of an almond tree trimming I gave him. Do they eat the wood parts of trees like that? Or was he just checking it out? I figured they would only eat leaves and greens, so I didn't know. Since then, (yesterday) I haven't seen him eat anything when I peek in at him. Is there something I should be feeding in particular for a Western Short Horned? I really can't find much info about this species, so any suggestions would be helpful. I did manage to find this link that gave foodplants for western short horned listed as
Foodplants: Acacia; Robinia; Rubus fructicosus agg.
http://phasmid-study...rus-Hebard-1934
That's all I've found. I couldn't find any of those on my property, so I went to home depot and grabbed a :liar:"sample":liar: of an acacia since it was on that list. He's expressed no interest in it yet. I really don't want to starve it! I really need to know what native or non-native plants this guy would eat so I can go find some!
Hope to get some info here, thanks for taking time to read this!
Brand new to the forum and the world of bugs and stuff! I recently captured a Western Short Horned Walking Stick (Parabacillus Hesperus). I have never kept an insect before and started to read up on them. Since learning more, I have become quite interested in these little creatures. However, I'm a little concerned about the well being of the little guy I captured.
This little guy was hanging out on my screen door for two days. I was reading up on them the whole time and decided to hold onto him for a little while. He only has 4 legs, I've read that they will grow back though. He kind of struggles to climb around the habitat I made him, but gets around ok. My real concern is that I only saw this guy eating once. It looked like he was chomping on the bark of an almond tree trimming I gave him. Do they eat the wood parts of trees like that? Or was he just checking it out? I figured they would only eat leaves and greens, so I didn't know. Since then, (yesterday) I haven't seen him eat anything when I peek in at him. Is there something I should be feeding in particular for a Western Short Horned? I really can't find much info about this species, so any suggestions would be helpful. I did manage to find this link that gave foodplants for western short horned listed as
Foodplants: Acacia; Robinia; Rubus fructicosus agg.
http://phasmid-study...rus-Hebard-1934
That's all I've found. I couldn't find any of those on my property, so I went to home depot and grabbed a :liar:"sample":liar: of an acacia since it was on that list. He's expressed no interest in it yet. I really don't want to starve it! I really need to know what native or non-native plants this guy would eat so I can go find some!
Hope to get some info here, thanks for taking time to read this!