leaving for a trip, will my mantis be okay without food for 10ish days?

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I disagree, freshly hatched flies or larvae are High in Omega 3 & 6, and certified to have a 53% protein content. They(maggots) are widely used as feed for livestock chickens, pigs and other. I suppose it is good to gut load for feeding mantids fresh flies have a lot of nutrition.
 
I disagree, freshly hatched flies or larvae are High in Omega 3 & 6, and certified to have a 53% protein content. They(maggots) are widely used as feed for livestock chickens, pigs and other. I suppose it is good to gut load for feeding mantids fresh flies have a lot of nutrition.
Jesus Christ man you can't retain the same nutritional composition across metamorphosis that's not how the law of conservation of mass works
who TF is certifying the protein content? and are you sure it's Calliphora?
 
Here’s the research
 

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I disagree, freshly hatched flies or larvae are High in Omega 3 & 6, and certified to have a 53% protein content. They(maggots) are widely used as feed for livestock chickens, pigs and other. I suppose it is good to gut load for feeding mantids fresh flies have a lot of nutrition.
Craig, I think the suggestion is that maggots are nutritious, but since they burn a lot of energy turning into flies, you first have to feed the flies before they regain their nutritional content. On an unrelated note, Acheta domesticus scored higher than I thought it would.
 
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Living things are made up of proteins and fats, do you think that by changing shape this somehow changes the composition of what the living is made up of?
 
Living things are made up of proteins and fats, do you think that by changing shape this somehow changes the composition of what the living is made up of?
No, but apparently the change requires energy which expends some of that composition. At least until it's renewed.
 
What is needed to understand is if the gut load for gheckos can even be metabolized by mantids. Gut-loading for reptiles ie via a mouse or a cricket a method for administering medication or supplements which aren’t necessarily digested fully by the feeder, they transport the load to the insectivore. Mostly in gheckos and some reptiles in captivity, calcium is supplemented.
Question is does ghecko gut load (mostly calcium) have to do with mantids? Can they even synthesize it, or could it even be toxic?
I know people like to do what they think is best but I think your confusing the biological needs of different organisms, somewhat like the administering of honey to mantids? Useless If not detrimental to them. May as well give chicken soup! 🤷🏻‍♂️.
If anyone has any real science on this topic please feel free, but spreading misinformation is a travesty.
 
I'm no gut loading authority, but I'd be inclined give a feeder what's best for the feeder. That, in turn, should be best for the pet. I'm giving my Shelfordella lateralis roaches Repashy Bug Burger. They seem to like it, but I have some reservations about it's calcium content. Bug Burger is intended to gut load feeders so that they're nutritious for reptiles. I'm giving my roaches to tarantulas, however.
 
Living things are made up of proteins and fats, do you think that by changing shape this somehow changes the composition of what the living is made up of?
look up the law of conservation of matter. it's a complicated topic. the animal doesn't just "change shape", it literally breaks down fats to convert them to proteins, but in many species, there's a requirement to feed after emergence to have optimized protein/fat amounts
Excuse me? Look it up yourself
I still need the article title at least, then I can do that. At the moment, the pic won't even load
What is needed to understand is if the gut load for gheckos can even be metabolized by mantids. Gut-loading for reptiles ie via a mouse or a cricket a method for administering medication or supplements which aren’t necessarily digested fully by the feeder, they transport the load to the insectivore. Mostly in gheckos and some reptiles in captivity, calcium is supplemented.
god dammit lemme explain real slowly for you
the gut-load is metabolized by the FEEDER, which converts the amino acids within the food into its own biological molecules, which the predator can then absorb
we're only talking the 3 macronutrients here, not minerals or vitamins and such
Question is does ghecko gut load (mostly calcium) have to do with mantids? Can they even synthesize it, or could it even be toxic?
gecko gut-load is NOT "mostly calcium". every living organism needs calcium. can excess calcium cause an issue? yes. but I don't think we're even close to that point yet
I know people like to do what they think is best but I think your confusing the biological needs of different organisms, somewhat like the administering of honey to mantids? Useless If not detrimental to them. May as well give chicken soup! 🤷🏻‍♂️.
If anyone has any real science on this topic please feel free, but spreading misinformation is a travesty.
*you're
every organism has more or less the same biological needs. all animal cells are made up of the same molecules and the same elements are required in basically the same quantities to function
the question is how does that organism obtain those molecules
herbivores, for example, have the enzymes necessary to break down plant cells and pull those materials out and convert them to their own biomass. the nutrient profile of say a hickory leaf is going to be about the same as that of a blade of grass. Now, you're probably thinking "well then why can't every herbivore just eat ANY plant?" good question. the answer is that aside from the proteins/AA, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, etc within that plant tissue are various chemicals that "lock" up the nutrients. Without an enzyme to break that chemical down, the animal cannot actually use the material. It may even make the material toxic. Why does cyanide kill us? Because we don't have enzymes called P450s to break it down, and so it stays in our cellular machinery and inhibits the actions, leading to cell death. This is why most herbivorous insects will die if they're not eating the plant they've evolved to eat. Some generalists exist, but even they have their limits.
now let's talk about carnivores. carnivorous animals cannot digest things like cellulose or lignins, and so they would die if they ate a plant (ok there's nuance here like pollen is usually edible to everything and a bite of a leaf may not kill something). Why? Because they don't have the enzymes required to unlock the nutrients within a plant cell. That's what it comes down to
the reason we want to gut-load feeders is because that feeder isn't just some carrier of all of the nutrients for its predators. It is itself an organism that has its own biological processes that require energy and nutrients. I do not know why this is a difficult concept. Did you ever see those energy flow pyramids in 4th grade about each trophic level only getting 10% (ok the range is actually between 8 and 15%) of the available energy from the previous trophic level? Metabolism is hella inefficient. You know how foods have calories on the nutrition facts? Well, the actual calories in that food is about 10 times higher, but your body can't possibly absorb all of it. Most of it gets lost as heat. Don't believe me? Hydrate some yeast in some molasses water and wait about a day, then feel how much warmer the solution becomes. It's basic physics, chemistry, and biology. god damn!
Truth being told, there is very little scientific data on predatory insects with regard to dietary needs and supplements, though here is some interest research and one of our favorite people “bugs in cyberspace “ had a part in it. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6289422/
this is only partially true. later I'll post references (right now I'm on the toilet and my roommate and I are off to the recycling center before we feed our mantises today, plus it's cleaning day) about this, but there are studies done on various predatory arthropods (including mantises but also spiders, assassin bugs, predaceous stinkbugs, etc) that show a few things
1: when prey has extra protein in its diet, predator survival and growth rate tend to be higher
2: most predators benefit from a multi-species diet. Those that do not either don't do any worse on the mixed diet or are specialists to begin with
3: I have my own data on mantis performance on fruit flies gut-loaded versus not gut-loaded

I'm no gut loading authority, but I'd be inclined give a feeder what's best for the feeder. That, in turn, should be best for the pet. I'm giving my Shelfordella lateralis roaches Repashy Bug Burger. They seem to like it, but I have some reservations about it's calcium content. Bug Burger is intended to gut load feeders so that they're nutritious for reptiles. I'm giving my roaches to tarantulas, however.
calcium is crucial to the fertilization of eggs in animals. the other thing we haven't even touched on here is transient gut microbes. but I think Craigey-poo needs to learn the basics first ;)
 
look up the law of conservation of matter. it's a complicated topic. the animal doesn't just "change shape", it literally breaks down fats to convert them to proteins, but in many species, there's a requirement to feed after emergence to have optimized protein/fat amounts

I still need the article title at least, then I can do that. At the moment, the pic won't even load

god dammit lemme explain real slowly for you
the gut-load is metabolized by the FEEDER, which converts the amino acids within the food into its own biological molecules, which the predator can then absorb
we're only talking the 3 macronutrients here, not minerals or vitamins and such

gecko gut-load is NOT "mostly calcium". every living organism needs calcium. can excess calcium cause an issue? yes. but I don't think we're even close to that point yet

*you're
every organism has more or less the same biological needs. all animal cells are made up of the same molecules and the same elements are required in basically the same quantities to function
the question is how does that organism obtain those molecules
herbivores, for example, have the enzymes necessary to break down plant cells and pull those materials out and convert them to their own biomass. the nutrient profile of say a hickory leaf is going to be about the same as that of a blade of grass. Now, you're probably thinking "well then why can't every herbivore just eat ANY plant?" good question. the answer is that aside from the proteins/AA, fats, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals, etc within that plant tissue are various chemicals that "lock" up the nutrients. Without an enzyme to break that chemical down, the animal cannot actually use the material. It may even make the material toxic. Why does cyanide kill us? Because we don't have enzymes called P450s to break it down, and so it stays in our cellular machinery and inhibits the actions, leading to cell death. This is why most herbivorous insects will die if they're not eating the plant they've evolved to eat. Some generalists exist, but even they have their limits.
now let's talk about carnivores. carnivorous animals cannot digest things like cellulose or lignins, and so they would die if they ate a plant (ok there's nuance here like pollen is usually edible to everything and a bite of a leaf may not kill something). Why? Because they don't have the enzymes required to unlock the nutrients within a plant cell. That's what it comes down to
the reason we want to gut-load feeders is because that feeder isn't just some carrier of all of the nutrients for its predators. It is itself an organism that has its own biological processes that require energy and nutrients. I do not know why this is a difficult concept. Did you ever see those energy flow pyramids in 4th grade about each trophic level only getting 10% (ok the range is actually between 8 and 15%) of the available energy from the previous trophic level? Metabolism is hella inefficient. You know how foods have calories on the nutrition facts? Well, the actual calories in that food is about 10 times higher, but your body can't possibly absorb all of it. Most of it gets lost as heat. Don't believe me? Hydrate some yeast in some molasses water and wait about a day, then feel how much warmer the solution becomes. It's basic physics, chemistry, and biology. god damn!

this is only partially true. later I'll post references (right now I'm on the toilet and my roommate and I are off to the recycling center before we feed our mantises today, plus it's cleaning day) about this, but there are studies done on various predatory arthropods (including mantises but also spiders, assassin bugs, predaceous stinkbugs, etc) that show a few things
1: when prey has extra protein in its diet, predator survival and growth rate tend to be higher
2: most predators benefit from a multi-species diet. Those that do not either don't do any worse on the mixed diet or are specialists to begin with
3: I have my own data on mantis performance on fruit flies gut-loaded versus not gut-loaded


calcium is crucial to the fertilization of eggs in animals. the other thing we haven't even touched on here is transient gut microbes. but I think Craigey-poo needs to learn the basics first ;)
Craigey-poo learned the basics before you were school age. Don’t be disrespectful
 
Craigey-poo learned the basics before you were school age. Don’t be disrespectful
and there were a lot of unknowns back in the 30s. the earliest insect nutritional ecology work involving predaceous species are from the late 80s. the basics really were basic back then. hell, even I didn't get introduced to ecology until high school, nowadays it's a 5th grade lesson
 
and there were a lot of unknowns back in the 30s. the earliest insect nutritional ecology work involving predaceous species are from the late 80s. the basics really were basic back then. hell, even I didn't get introduced to ecology until high school, nowadays it's a 5th grade lesson
I wonder when Marjorie Taylor Greene took her first biology class. She disapproves of fake meat that was grown in a "peach tree dish."
 
I use homemade fruit fly culture media to give the adult flies some nutrients and water. Is that considered gut loading? I don't know which nutrients mantids (or invertebrates in general) need, but this seems to keep them plump and juicy a little longer. The media contains sugar, brewer's yeast, and potato flakes.
Yeah that’s not too bad. I’d cut out the potato flakes though. It’s the brewers yeast you really want. That protein is what’s really going to benefit the mantis! I would still recommend switching to CGD or Rebecca’s fly food.
 
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