Grossest mantis experience yet while feeding

[wetterdew]

Today I fed the largest of my home-caught flies to one of my mantises, and as soon as she grabbed it, a bunch of larvae spewed out of the fly's rear.  Not sure if we can swear here but it was ******* gross.  They landed on the bottom of the cup and are writhing around there.  While she ate, more continued to fall out of the fly.

How many of you have seen this, or something even grosser?  Here's a picture of the mantis, along with her fly's wing in front of her: http://imgur.com/a/DVq3B

 

[CosbyArt]

@wetterdew I've seen it before and surprised me the first time too. The fly is a flesh fly (Sarcophagidae) and commonly lays live hatched young (maggot larvae) instead of eggs. If you look up a photo of it you can avoid it in the future by not feeding your pet a fly with the gray/white stripes.

 

[Teamonger]

I've had some of the black solider flies squirt out lines of eggs while being eaten but eggs are not nearly as bad at live maggots. Mostly I was more annoyed that the eggs were not in my bin then I was grossed out. Feeding hasn't been too traumatic, a few of the mating casualties I have had on the other hand.... nightmare fuel.

 

[Sticky]

@wetterdew I've seen it before and surprised me the first time too. The fly is a flesh fly (Sarcophagidae) and commonly lays live hatched young (maggot larvae) instead of eggs. If you look up a photo of it you can avoid it in the future by not feeding your pet a fly with the gray/white stripes.

Can they hurt the mantis eating it?

 

[CosbyArt]

Can they hurt the mantis eating it?

Good question and one I had to look up for a definite answer, and glad you asked.

Personally I haven't had a issue when the adult flesh flies (Sarcophagidae) were in my fly traps and fed to my mantids before I knew of the live larvae. Since discovering their ability to lay live maggots though, I actively search the trapped flies when feeding my mantids to kill/release the flesh flies to avoid the loose larvae. It seems not feeding them to my mantids may have saved my pets as there is more to it with the flies.

It seems yes the flesh flies (Emblemasoma erro specifically) are parasitic and lay larvae directly on invertebrates (cicadas, mantids, crickets, grasshoppers, etc) backs. The larvae burrow between the abdominal segments or the soft spot where the wings join the thorax area, and feast on the insects blood.

For scientific data on the flies read the articles at EntomologyToday, University of California Riverside, Ask A Entomologist, and a related blog Parasite of the Day.

 

[crabbypatty]

 Yes I've had that happen, it was nasty, once with my giant Asian, once with a gongy. Both times the mantids were fine, they even munched on some of the larvae, haha. The high temps in the gongy cage killed the larvae super fast though, I ended up cleaning out the cage for my giant Asian cuz it was nasty looking at them wiggling ??.

 

[Kermit]

Happened to me too...once... I was fired up to have caught this big fat fly, thinking, "WOW this will be a great meal for one of my bigger PMs".... Yuck!!!!

?

 

[MantisRCool]

Eeww lol thankfully that never happenned I think I use different kind of flies  grossest thing was prolly when I had to chop up roaches to hand feed. And the stink of curly wing fly substrate.

 

[Mystymantis]

I had this happen to me a few years ago, and I was quite surprised! I avoided feeding that kind of fly after that.