Banana

Just checking to see if anyone offers a slice of banana to there mantis. I offer to my big Chinese mantis every so often. As well as katydids.

I've heard of this before, but never tried it myself.

I offer banana to all my other bugs, but I haven't tried giving it to mantids yet. They probably get a second hand taste of banana from the feeders. I have tried giving my mantids honey a couple of times. They like it, but it is probably not all that good for them. I like giving treats anyway. :tt2: I like to eat things that are probably not very good for me. :lol:

I don't offer anything that has no protein to my mantids. The only time they will get things like banana is when they eat something that ate the banana.

I do if I have time, they like it.

Mantids are designed to eat insects, not fruit. Never understood why this is even tried. Probably best to stick to the proper foods.

We do it cause we figure if your walking around in the treetops in the jungle you might step upon a smashed banana that the monkeys left behing in their eagerness to play with their friends instead of eating their supper, (with me so far?) , and when u step in poo or something else, you have to wash off your toes, and what better way then to stick in mouth :lol: ! So then u get a little taste of banana (we hope is banana) and from then on out, you follow monkeys around waiting for the leftovers! :lol:

Have even fed pieces of hamburger to mantids before and they like that too!

Rick said:

Mantids are designed to eat insects, not fruit. Never understood why this is even tried. Probably best to stick to the proper foods.

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I believe they take it in for the moisture content. Or possibly trace elements. It makes sense to me that rotting fruit attracts insects/food prey. So why not have a taste, while waiting for your next meal to fly by.

This does make sense to me. How often would fruit flies or any sort of insect that feeds on sweet things, be around a rotten or squished (Rebecca lol funny story) fruit?

Striking at a bug thats literally on a piece of rotten fruit? One way or another I am sure some time in the past 1,000 years a mantid has had the taste of a piece of fruit on their claws that they ended up cleaning off with their mouth.

I say YUM! :tt2: u tell em Brian :lol:

Son of a gun, Rebecca! You know that you're crazed and that seems to fit, together with a lot of work, with your mantis keeping, but see what you've done! Massaman is sharing his hamburgers with them, the guy with all the ssssss believes that bananas may contain trace elements (not sure which ones) and Brian thinks that all your mantises traipsing around in the tree tops makes sense to him. Brian, when they are not stepping in squishy fruit, they are probably stepping in bird droppings. Yum, love those trace elements!

I am going to bed. I doubt that I shall sleep. Forgive them Great Mantis Goddess (BbYN), they know not what they do.

I do believe I've gone Buggy Phil, but alas, there is little hope of recovering!

I've given honey drops on the tip of chopsticks and every species I've had so far (14?) has eagerly gobbled it up. I've used it to encourage sick mantids to eat, as well. And if a mantis has refused it, they were invariably getting ready to molt.

Doesnt such consistency across species and continents suggest some biological compulsion...? Ive never experienced any digestive problems related to it. And the flower mimics seem particularly interested in it (somehow bee related?).

Has anyone seen any research on the phenomena...?

Mantids are well known for enjoying honey, though I don't think that it is a "compulsion" in that while they eat it when it is offered to them, I haven't seen them hunt it down, as flies do. The carbohydrates in honey are used by many insects, such as locusts and cockroaches and are readily absorbed as a good source of readily available energy. It may be that they genes that attract mantids to honey are left over from when mantids were generalist feeders like their close relatives.

I think that honey does them no harm, but obviously the vast majority of mantids in the wild manage perfectly well without it. It is also worth noting, though not the case here, that insects, like mammals, will partake of substances like ethanol that do them no good but make them drunk. this is a commonplace with bees and wasps feeding on fermented fruit.

At this time in the fall, the pears are falling off my pear trees and I take my long forceps and an insect cup and just go out with Abby and pick, literally pick the wasps and hornets out of the fruit fermenting on the ground, they are easy to get. ( I tried giving away the pears, but alas, no one wants them! Too much work picking them off the trees I guess, I use what I can, mostly for fruit fly cultures, cause two people cannot eat them all.) That was just in case you thought I was wasting them, which I guess I am :mellow: