# tiny worms



## Lan (Oct 20, 2005)

hi everyone! my name is landon and i'm new here.

just thought i'd introduce myself before i start asking questions.

i've been feeding my african mantis crickets, and today i fed it two different kind of flies i caught in my backyard. a small fruit fly and a small housefly. my mantis ate both of them. i was looking at the mantis now and noticed several very tiny white worms inching around on the bottom of the container. could these be from eggs inside the housefly?? if so, should i be worried if my mantis ingested them? they won't hatch inside him or anything right? :?


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## infinity (Oct 20, 2005)

ooo tricky one... one day is usually enough for fly eggs to hatch so they could just be the maggots, but just one or two seems strange (could be a last hopeless attempt by the fly to continue it's family if it knew it was going to die  )... I have my doubts as to whether it was a parasitism as this would have killed the fly and hence the mantid would probably have refused to eat it. There's a *chance* they were in the fly and came out if the mantid ate it - but this is unlikely - and if this is the case, don't stress - the larvae are usually endoparasitic and hence will die soon anyway. If they were parasites of the mantid, it would be dead... so I think chances are they're fly maggots... If in doubt, keep in a warm place and feed on banana or something similar and wait about 2 weeks! the lifecycle of the drosophila is about 10 days- 2 weeks - then at the end you'll have more flies to feed it


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## Lan (Oct 20, 2005)

thanks for replying! haha that's a pretty good idea, but i don't think that's possible now. my mantis seemed fine, but i decided to destroy the little buggers because they were starting to creep up the side of the container! (not out of concern for the mantis i just didn't want them to escape into my room...bleh) hehe maybe i should just stick to crickets. :lol:


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## PseudoDave (Oct 20, 2005)

I've got a feeling that they may have already been in the substrate, in egg form, unless you don't have substrate or things like plants they could have come in on. Either way you've killed them now so little to worry about either way  Welcome to the forum Lan.

Dave


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