Help with mealworms.

[Quake]

I got mealworms as food, and they are having a little trouble eating them. They will pick them up near the head, and try to dig in, but 2 problems arise. The mealworms squirm a little, and when they wiggle too much the mantid drops it. Also that they are a little hard for the little guy's jaw, he takes a good bit to bite in, so he ends up dropping it due to wiggling before he gets a bite.

 

[idolomantis]

First of all mantids aren't used to worm like prey.

2nd is mealworms are very nasty, they'll take a bite out mantids.

3Rd Mealworms have hard exoskelletons and have a very low foodworth.

If you are going to feed worms better try wax or buffalo worms.

 

[Birdfly]

Its quite simple, the mealworm is to big, try a smaller one. Come on Quake your a bio major you should recognise this

Edit, They are not too hard for the jaws either, mantid jaws are extremely powerful cutting instruments, some of the best in the buisiness, you only have to watch them cut through tough beetle elytra or a large katydid mandible to realize this.

eg:

 

[Rick]

Mealworms are a poor food for mantids but they should have no trouble actually eating them.

 

[collinchang635]

For some reason, my ant mantis didn't like mealworms. She would back away from it or take it and throw it to the other side of the cage. This happened until I got a mealworm that just molted. She caught it and ate it. So maybe try molted mealworms.

 

[Meiji]

Mealworms are a poor food for mantids but they should have no trouble actually eating them.

Rick, "poor food" in what way? I don't see why they would be nutritionally any better or worse than other insects. I agree that they are poor in regards to how appealing they are to mantises!

Which brings me to my advise for the poster. My mantises eat lots of mealworms and it always starts the same way. I cut their heads off, touch the wet severed "neck" to the mantises' mandibles, and they get the idea and grab it. I do alot of my feeding by hand with the help of a common pin secured to the end of a chopstick.

Meiji (John in Boston)

 

[Rob Byatt]

Rick, "poor food" in what way? I don't see why they would be nutritionally any better or worse than other insects. I agree that they are poor in regards to how appealing they are to mantises!Which brings me to my advise for the poster. My mantises eat lots of mealworms and it always starts the same way. I cut their heads off, touch the wet severed "neck" to the mantises' mandibles, and they get the idea and grab it. I do alot of my feeding by hand with the help of a common pin secured to the end of a chopstick.

Meiji (John in Boston)

There's no big hand with a pin in the wild, so why do you do it in captivity ?

As Birdfly quite rightly said, the size of mealworm offered was probably too large.

 

[Birdfly]

As i mentioned earlier mantids are mostly if not totally opertunistic feeders, taking worm like, non worm like, spidery or fast moving blur, put one next to your computer and tease it with the cursor. All potential prey has to do is move, be within the right size criteror and not be some thing it may have learnt is distastful or too much effort to get to the meat. A good variety of edible insects and their larvae make the best diet your mantids can have

 

[Meiji]

There's no big hand with a pin in the wild, so why do you do it in captivity ?

There's also no enclosure keeping mantises from going where they want to go. There's also no spray bottle giving them water. There's no keeper separating them so they don't cannibalize each other. There's no keeper placing couples in proximity to mate either.

But there are predators that eat mantises. Should I put a bird in my mantises' cage to replicate the conditions of the wild? How about a rat and a lizard as well?

The idea is to create optimal conditions for mantis survival and procreation in captivity. This can often be done by replicating the natural environment, but creating naturalistic conditions is a means to an end. It is not the goal itself.

I don't exclusively hand feed (what a nightmare that would be) but i do hand feed often for at least three reasons:

Firstly, I prefer not to leave crickets in my enclosures for reasons that have been discussed on this forum in the past and are well-understood by experienced animal keepers. I want my mantises to be well-nourished. I don't want the hunter to become the hunted nor to discover that an exotic mantis I have been pampering since birth has had its head chewed off mid-moult by a hungry cricket.

Secondly, whenever possible, I like to make sure that my mantis actually eats what's provided. I'd rather give my mantis a lunch it eats rather than give it five lunches hoping that it eats one of them and allows the rest to pollute the enclosure.

Thirdly, hand feeding allows me to better vary my mantises' diet by incorporating less-tempting but still-nutritious food (such as mealworms or even a random insect I stepped on walking home from work) into their menu.

 

[hibiscusmile]

Gee, I was gonna say something, but by the time I read all the posts, it clearly flew my mind! ha ha, A good idea is to cut the head off like someone said, and then it will take it. Mine take superworms fine, but not so much the mealworm, the smaller mantis like mio and parva take it, but a lot aren't crazy over them, they do like to see them squirming on the container. For my mantis that are crippled in some way, I always cut the heads off and feed with a toothpick until they are able to hold it in their mouth or their hands. But like someone said, they are not to tough for them to eat, even the superworms require a minute of good chewing to break open their skin, but once it is broke, the goody comes out and they readily eat!

 

[MantidLord]

Yeah, cutting the head off works fine when I fed superworms to my mantids. They did the same thing. First they'd run up to the superworm, then they'd stop and try and figure out a place to strike. When they finally strike, they'll pick it up and drop it. But one of my females eventually caught a superworm on her own. Although she was really hungry, I guess how hungry they are depends on it as well. "Should I risk fighting this thing to eat, or should I wait for something more easy." Just like a week ago when I ran out of fruitflies, and had to place maggots around the enclosures of my L1 nymphs. They couldn't pick up the maggots, but the adapted to just diving into the maggots and devouring it. Just what I've noticed with my children.

 

[OGIGA]

Any opinion on the beetles that mealworms become? Are they any more or less nutritious?