Getting Ghosts to eat

[cloud jaguar]

I know Ghosts like to keep a thin figure and are not prone to gluttony (unlike S. Limbatas), but my wife's 3 Ghosts seem to eat too little. Below I list how much they ate - Is this normal food consumption for Ghosts?

1. Diablo (looks male) 3/4" long. This guy seems to have a plump butt yet only ate 1 cricket on his own and yesterday ate 1/2 of a crushed cricket smeared with a bit of honey which was handfed to him my me. Does not seem to interested to eat but once i kept putting the crushed cricket to his mouth he eventually ate but did not bother to grab the cricket.

2. Harmala (looks female) 1" long, Molted 1x. This girl did not eat anything for about 2 days then molted. Slight mishap molting since she fell on her back but she molted perfectly save for her crown is bent backwards in half She does not seem to mind though and she likes to hang out really low in her enclosure dangling from fake foliage so her crown does not rub against the humidity foam we put in there. After she shed, the next evening she took 2 crushed crickets with a little bit of honey on them from handfeeding. She does not seem to really go after the crickets even if they climb on her perch but likes to be handfed. Is that normal and that she has eaten only 2 crickets in a week?

3. Unknown (I dont know what she calls it). 3/4" looks female. Ate 3 crickets within 1 week which were put into her enclosure. No need to hand feed this one.

Anyways, does this food consumption seem about normal for these or should they be fed more? I am not really worried because they seem fine but please let me know if this eating behavior is normal for ghosts.

~Arkanis

 

[hibiscusmile]

Most of mine eat all they can everyday, but they all have their own preferances. the one who is eating because u hold it to it is not wanting it. It may be ready to molt, Never force them to eat, they can go weeks without food, so as long as they are getting water, which most ghost want everyday, then do not worry about it, she will eat when she or he is hungry, some of them just don 't care. I have some dead leafs who could care less about food, but then another one, jumps at it, so it is different for them just like for us.

 

[revmdn]

I have two female ghost. I think they are sub-adult. I never gave them crickets. They have only had house flies and blue bottles. The one who eats more might take two bb's every two days. If I put in more than that, she tends to smack them away. Hope that helps. Mine get fat, but they don't eat a lot.

 

[PhilinYuma]

Once again, Arkanis,

A fascinating question which prompted some simple experimentation on my part.

I suspect that mantids' feeding behavior is influenced by at least two main factors, hunger and prey preference. When I got my first wild limbata, she was starving. In my ignorance, I fed her some fire ants (remember that they do not track with acetic acid), which she pursued and ate eagerly. I am sure that today, though, if I were to introduce some into her pot (I have tried this, already, of course) they would run around uneaten until they died.

I have been feeding my ghosts almost exclusively now on bees. I realize that anyone in a CCD state may have reservations about this (though statistically, as Christian pointed out, the number of bees that we capture would not affect the situation one way or the other), but their nutritional value (size and protein:chitin ratio) is probably only exceeded by roaches. Much more to the point, though, is the demonstrable fact that ghosts and some other mantids (my budwings, larger boxers and Chinese old enough to capture them) show a marked preference for them.

To demonstrate this, and to show that they are not just attracted to bees because of the fact that they like to lid squat and the bees fly up to them, I tried two rudimentary "experiments." This morning (1000) I fed an appropriately sized cricket to ghost Female #1 (she and her sisters were raised on crix and later, flies), and at 1700, it was still running around unmolested. At that time, I mutilated a bee's wings so that it could buzz but not fly, and introduced it into the pot. The ghost climbed down from the lid, chased it briefly, and captured it. The bee is now gone and the crick continues to frisk.

In the second case, I placed an open vial in such a position over the feeding port of Female #2 that it did not fly into the pot but continued to buzz around in the vial. Female #2 climbed down the side of the pot, reached into the vial and captured the bee. In both cases, I suspect that the bees' buzzing was a feeding stimulus.

Superman, Katt's ghost, is another interesting example. Katt had mainly fed him crix and, I think, flies, which often settle on the substrate, and he had a habit of running around in the bottom or lower level of his enclosure. I have slowly introduced him to the Wonderful World of Bees, and right now, he is on the lid of the pot, having eaten one bee this afternoon and hoping for another (you're out of luck until tomorrow, mate!)..

I suspect that this works with most flying insects, though I guesstimate that a bee has at least 10x the mass of a housefly (I have a scientific expert working on the actual figures; thanks Mija!) so every time that I feed a bee, you have to feed 10 houseflies to keep up!

In summary, then, as Hibiscusmile points out, no mantis is going to starve when there is appropriate live food in range, and you don't really need to feed them by hand, but many mantises, particularly ambush predators, appear to be stimulated by the buzzing of wings and prefer the kind of flying insect that they would normally take in the wild.

Damn, I love this hobby!

 

[cloud jaguar]

thanks everyone for your post and your study of bees philinyuma. *2 of the ghosts have molted fine and resumed eating crickets. There is one which has not yet molted but it ate a cricket yesterday so perhaps it is not really ready to molt yet.

~arkanis