can i feed a beetle to my chinese mantid?

[sevenoaks]

do you think she would eat a round looking yellow and black stripped beetle with a hard shell? i try to catch her wild bugs (i dont spray) instead of just giving crickets all the time. she ate two grasshoppers yesterday that i caught her.

 

[LauraMG]

Give it a try! As long as it's not exposed to pesticides. If they can't eat it, they won't, but they'll eat most anything.

 

[Ntsees]

You can feed beetles if you want. But most preferably, you should feed soft insects instead. Just my opinion.

 

[Rick]

You can feed them nearly any insect. The few they can't/won't eat they will know and drop it.

 

[Vore]

I hafta agree. The other day I caught a click beetle, and I was hesitant to feed it to my mantis because he had just molted the day before and I was worried that maybe the beetle's click mechanism might nail him in the eyes or something. At first, he caught it but let it go, so I thought he either wasn't able to get through the tough shell or was repelled by its strange defenses. But a few hours later, he got around to it again and found the soft underbelly.

 

[Peter Clausen]

sounds like a potato beetle (chrysomelidae). I'll be surprised if the mantis can get through the shell.