# Toxic moth?



## yen_saw (Apr 17, 2005)

Caught a lot of moths (Lunar moth, Sphinx moth, diamond back moth, etc) during the bug hunt yesterday night. Are there any types of toxic moth we should avoid feeding mantises? Thanks.


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## Steve (Apr 17, 2005)

None of the ones you mentioned are toxic. A lot depends on the larval food plant i guess. But what's toxic to many animals doesn't seem to have the same effect on inverts. I often place my mantids on flowering plants outdoors to let them catch their own wild game. I've seen one happily capture and eat a monarch. I've seen another one eat a dogbane beetle. They didn't seem to take notice to the toxins within. There were no long term effects either. I've noticed the same thing with spiders and assassins. However, I did see one capture a firefly and promptly throw it back after sampling it! It would seem that they have some sort of discretion as to what is edible or not? Anyway, I tend not to worry too much about a food items natural toxins. I would say that the bigger concern is feeding wild game that has ingested or been exposed to insecticides. Also, I don't know if I'd have the heart to feed a luna moth to my mantids!  Those are too cool/rare to be food!!!


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## yen_saw (Apr 18, 2005)

Thanks Steve. I didn't know there were many types of moth in Texas alone. We collected many different species of moths, beetles, (weevil, flip beetles, dive beetles, etc), flying ants, Katylid, dragonflies, jameserfly, etc. I am still learning to keep my own bug collection, here i pinned few of them... I need work harder and extra careful to keep wings color from fading next time...

















and also some live one i haven't got a time to pin them....











I don't know what species they are, especially the moth, some are really pretty, there are lots of them so i'm planning to feed them to my mantis (moth lovers are going to hate me for this  ) if the mantis don't resist them (don't have to worry about running out of feeders for few weeks :lol: ). Here is a pic of our set up, it is about 7 feet high at the light and 6 feet wide, run by gasoline operated motor. it is deep in a forest so i assumed pestiside level is minimal.






It is still cold here at night so coming this warm summer around June/July there should be a lot more interesting bugs showing up to our trap.... hopefully i can get some mantises too (a friend told me they do get some fancy mantises when it's warm).


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