Meal and Wax Worms

Mantisking · Oct 21, 2009

Good for mantises?

Ntsees · Oct 22, 2009

I've never tried feeding them to mantids but it might work. I've heard that they have a lot of fat content so I don't know if it's supposed to be good or bad for the mantids.

Matticus · Oct 22, 2009

I raised my first M. religiosa on 75% mealworms and 25% cockroaches/moths from under my porch light. I found him at L6 and he lived for 8 months, so I think they work pretty well as a primary food source.

Emile.Wilson · Oct 22, 2009

Watch out for their mandibles, they can hurt a mantis.

PhilinYuma · Oct 22, 2009

Ntsees said:
I've never tried feeding them to mantids but it might work. I've heard that they have a lot of fat content so I don't know if it's supposed to be good or bad for the mantids.

It's interesting how we often run parallel threads. This issue was raised in the thread about the peacock male with an eating disorder, and someone (Emile?) offered this thread on the question of feeding fatty waxworms: http://mantidforum.net/forums/index.php?sh...c=11880&hl= Do you post signs in yr bugroom? Things like "Did you shut that lid tightly?" "No, seriously," "They won't feed themselves, you know," and the like? You might want to add this line from Christian's post on that thread: "Waxmoths are one of the best food sources, but no one said they should be fed exclusively."

I'm not going to even begin saying that it is a good idea to know something about insect anatomy and physiology, but I do say that it is seriously non productive to talk of mantids as though they were little humans (except in jest!).

Unlike their close relatives, cockroaches and termites, mantids, so far as I know, lack the intestinal fauna to synthesize lineolic acid, and all insects, unlike mammals, require a dietary source of sterols. In insects, fat does not lie around in unsightly subcutaneous masses as it does in humans, but forms the "fat body" whose function is somewhat similar to the mammalian liver. It is true that carbohydrate is a readily available source of energy in insects as in mammals, but most insects have a limited ability to store polysaccharides (which range from insoluble starches to glycogen) and much of their energy (for flight, for example, as Superfreak will tell you from her study of energy consumption in migrating locusts) is derived from diacyglycerides stored in the fat body. Ha, ha! And I honestly thought that this was simple and straightforward when I started out!

O.K. Just do like Christian said!