His parents won't care. Remember, they RAISED him to be this kind of cruel person! A kid wouldn't just naturally be drawn to killing critters...I don't THINK. :blink:
Now to play the "devil's advocate" for a moment...how many of us have uploaded pics or videos of headless males mounting females? Or headless males/cagemates wandering around in their enclosures. As creepy as we find it, we must also find it fascinating/amusing on some level to want to share that with others, or watch it ourselves.
Now, how many of us have "stomped" a mismolt, rather than try to handfeed...or rather than freeze them relatively painlessly? How many of us have fed a mantis to another animal (frog, tarantula, chameleon, etc)?
"Let he who has not sinned cast the first stone."
While I definitely do NOT agree with this type of casual abuse to an animal...I think it rather hypocritical of us to be just as vulgar & cruel to this misguided (and quite possibly mental) kid. Besides, as mentioned, the kid seems to "get off" on it.
That being said, I hope he meets the same fate as that mantis a thousand times in the underworld.
(Yes, I flagged it...but honestly, YouTube is probably not going to do a darn thing about it!)
Lots of interesting points, here, Carey. I agree that parents can teach cruelty by their own words and example. Sometimes, perhaps often, though, the bad behavior is a result of neglect. I knew a 7 year old in SF whose GM and mother both told me how he loved insects. Nobody observed him, though. He was tirelessly catching insects so that he could toss them into spiders' webs to enjoy them being eaten (we wouldn't enjoy something like that, would we?), and that was the extent of his interest. It was I, not mom or GM who found him two blocks away from the house where he wouldn't be seen, merrily burning ants with a magnifying glass (it was my magnifier, too, darn it!). He knew it was wrong, so I made a deal with him, either I could tell his mom, ("No! Don't do that!") or teach him what he was doing. I held the focused light beam on his arm until he jumped. I don't think that he did that again, at least i never caught him, and I kept my magnifier locked up! I suspect that casual cruelty is a common human trait, think of slavery, think of soldiers in battle, think of schoolyard bullies, and kids need to be taught that it is wrong.
I too have seriously wondered about folks whose major interest in mantids is their killing and eating ability. i have no doubt that when a mantis eats a reptile or a fish, it is not being "cruel" to the victim, but I wonder about folks who focus exclusively on that part of their mantids' marvelous and varied behavior.
I have mentioned before that I had the run of a pet store in Chicago where a couple of times a week, customers would buy a goldfish and wait until after closing time when the water in the piranha tank was heated and they got to see their goldfish torn apart by the hungry predators I never watched the slaughter, but I did watch the spectators, and to quote the late, great Phil Ochs, "saliva was running from their smiles". Two sessions of that was enough for me. One new member here once stated that he had been raising a Chinese mantis for the sole purpose (Honest! He said that!) of warching it eat a pinky. Fortunately, Rick squished him before he could share the gruesome details. And BTW, have you noticed how many mantiseers also keep reptiles, instead of, say, bunny rabbits? I wonder what that is all about?!
I never hand feed crippled mantids.If they have a trait that gives them an increased tendency to mismolt, say, then we are artificially preserving that trait in the progeny. Someone mentioned that lines of long domesticated angelfish have lost the ability to care for their young. Forty years ago, part of the fun of raising this cichlid was watching the parents catching up their fry and spitting them into an area of safety. Now, though, many breeders raise the young without their parents, and many fish that would have died out in nature, spawn parents that lack the ability. I also think that a crippled mantis is not enjoying a very high "quality of life". I believe in euthanasia for humans, too!
So, brick or freezer? The brick method has a large "urghh" factor for some of us, and I would suggest that anyone who is squeamish shouldn't do it, but it is quicker than freezing, where the mantis dies relatively slowly, in the dark, abandoned by his/her sibs and owner! I guess that it depends on your point of view! I suspect that the freezer method is often used for the comfort of the owner than for the mantis "out of sight, out of mind".
Thank you for a thought provoking post! I hope that it produces a lot of discussion, and that that cretinous youth did some good, however inadvertently.
