I have spoiled Hikari-hime rotten. She is a spiny flower mantis, and I'm not sure but I think this next molt will be her final transformation: her wings are starting to come in and you can already see the eyemarks forming.
i knew some people fed honey to their mantids as a treat, but get this:
I have a bioactive terrarium for her. in it, I placed a small piece of apple for the isopods and spring tails and free-roaming meal worms. Hikari learned (if that's the right word) that sitting right on that apple slice was a good way to get the other animals to come as close to her as possible so she could harass them (she wasn't strong enough to take an uninjured mealworm yet)
but after a day or so, i spotted her just leaning in and eating the apple slice herself. she seemed to get so much of a taste for it, that she started to ignore the potential prey items in the enclosure as they fed beside her.
then more recently, I was munching on that dried sea weed snack stuff: ingredients include some sunflower seed oil and salt. i thought the seaweed tasted pretty meaty and as a joke offered some soggy seaweed to Hikari. she tasted it. then modestly took it from me in her claws and ate the whole piece. when it was gone, she crawled around like she was looking for crumbs. I fed some more to her a few days later by just placing it on my hand and letting her pick it up herself when she found it laying there. I haven't seen anyone talk about mantises having this foraging behavior.
I haven't been having the best luck with fly pupa or cultures so had been feeding my mantids wild caught mayflies and moths; if these delicate mayflies had been poisoned, they'd already be dead. but the mayflies dispersed around the middle of april (global warming much?) so I switched to meal worms. Hikari will basically eat anything I hand to her. she is the Labrador of mantids.
today, she was hanging out on my zizi plant while I was eating some strawberry. I decided to offer her some as a treat. i was surprised when she snatched it off the tip of my finger with the gusto of a ninjutsu student showing off to their classmates. she ate about half of it, to my morbid surprise. she didn't really look hungry, all the meal worms she's been getting.
I saw a video from the bugs in cyber space guy where he had a mantis on his plate, munching a cooked mushroom the same way Hikari likes to munch apple slices off the ground. has anyone else noticed their mantids having a taste for fruit or vegetables? I've also seen her face-plant into the coco mulch substrate and gorge on it, as a youngling. she seems to have outgrown that.
is she gonna die. have i over-spoiled her on fruit and seaweed? she looks so full in the abdomen. this is my first time raising mantids and I worry she's kind of small. does she eat weird stuff because I have chronically underfed her on insects?
also I'm not sure if she's really female or not. kind of hope its a male, cause then I wouldn't be as worried about the size issue.
i knew some people fed honey to their mantids as a treat, but get this:
I have a bioactive terrarium for her. in it, I placed a small piece of apple for the isopods and spring tails and free-roaming meal worms. Hikari learned (if that's the right word) that sitting right on that apple slice was a good way to get the other animals to come as close to her as possible so she could harass them (she wasn't strong enough to take an uninjured mealworm yet)
but after a day or so, i spotted her just leaning in and eating the apple slice herself. she seemed to get so much of a taste for it, that she started to ignore the potential prey items in the enclosure as they fed beside her.
then more recently, I was munching on that dried sea weed snack stuff: ingredients include some sunflower seed oil and salt. i thought the seaweed tasted pretty meaty and as a joke offered some soggy seaweed to Hikari. she tasted it. then modestly took it from me in her claws and ate the whole piece. when it was gone, she crawled around like she was looking for crumbs. I fed some more to her a few days later by just placing it on my hand and letting her pick it up herself when she found it laying there. I haven't seen anyone talk about mantises having this foraging behavior.
I haven't been having the best luck with fly pupa or cultures so had been feeding my mantids wild caught mayflies and moths; if these delicate mayflies had been poisoned, they'd already be dead. but the mayflies dispersed around the middle of april (global warming much?) so I switched to meal worms. Hikari will basically eat anything I hand to her. she is the Labrador of mantids.
today, she was hanging out on my zizi plant while I was eating some strawberry. I decided to offer her some as a treat. i was surprised when she snatched it off the tip of my finger with the gusto of a ninjutsu student showing off to their classmates. she ate about half of it, to my morbid surprise. she didn't really look hungry, all the meal worms she's been getting.
I saw a video from the bugs in cyber space guy where he had a mantis on his plate, munching a cooked mushroom the same way Hikari likes to munch apple slices off the ground. has anyone else noticed their mantids having a taste for fruit or vegetables? I've also seen her face-plant into the coco mulch substrate and gorge on it, as a youngling. she seems to have outgrown that.
is she gonna die. have i over-spoiled her on fruit and seaweed? she looks so full in the abdomen. this is my first time raising mantids and I worry she's kind of small. does she eat weird stuff because I have chronically underfed her on insects?
also I'm not sure if she's really female or not. kind of hope its a male, cause then I wouldn't be as worried about the size issue.
