My new unusual pet

[Domanating]

For those unfamiliar with it, it's an antlion. Probably the easiest pet to keep. Learned everything I needed to know about them in 10-20minutes.

I didn't know they existed in Europe and I got very surprised when I found it. I stumbled across this one while removing weeds from my garden.

Unlike its easier to spot American counterparts, which dig funnel like holes in the sand, the European species don't. They just borrow 1cm under the sand with their jaws sticking out.

They are the larval stage of a delicate flyer that has the body of a dragonfly and the head of a mantis. While the larva is an ugly, venomous and voracious creature, the adult eats polen and nectar. Talking about contrasts!

 

[D_Hemptress]

ive seen these on monster bug wars, very cool...

 

[MantidBro]

ive seen them on bug wars too, theyre freaking awesome, how intelligent, and amazing, what a neat pet!

 

[Aryia]

That is.. so scary!

 

[Domanating]

I sure was excited when I found it. I really wasn't expecting to find these on this side of the world.

They just need a small place with sand or any similar kind of loose substrate, at least 1 inch deep (for american species that build pits, at least 3 inches are required) and you got youself an antilion enclosure. No water is needed. They get all they need from prey and they can survive without food for several weeks.

Ultimate pet for lazy people if you ask me. They are easier to keep than a plant, lol

Edit: Better yet, as long as you keep track of their food getting caught, you don't need to close the enclosure because they are incapable of climbing anything

 

[MantidBro]

I sure was excited when I found it. I really wasn't expecting to find these on this side of the world.

They just need a small place with sand or any similar kind of loose substrate, at least 1 inch deep (for american species that build pits, at least 3 inches are required) and you got youself an antilion enclosure. No water is needed. They get all they need from prey and they can survive without food for several weeks.

Ultimate pet for lazy people if you ask me. They are easier to keep than a plant, lol

Edit: Better yet, as long as you keep track of their food getting caught, you don't need to close the enclosure because they are incapable of climbing anything

you FOUND it??? awesome!

 

[Domanating]

you FOUND it??? awesome!

Well, uuhh.... Yeah. If I didn't, I couldn't have taken the photos above. I already mentioned in the 1st post that I found it

 

[MantidBro]

Well, uuhh.... Yeah. If I didn't, I couldn't have taken the photos above. I already mentioned in the 1st post that I found it

so fresh lol, i meant i thought you bought it, not actually found it, thats awesome

 

[Domanating]

so fresh lol, i meant i thought you bought it, not actually found it, thats awesome

Oh. No, I don't buy anything insect related. I already have enough conventional pets to care about and pay for their food and health. Every insect I own and prey items I give them are wild caught. I also don't have cricket or fruitfly cultures because I simply don't need them.

In Europe, exotic pet business is a fraction of what the US can offer, so in most cases, it's every exotic keeper for himself h34r:

 

[MantidBro]

Oh. No, I don't buy anything insect related. I already have enough conventional pets to care about and pay for their food and health. Every insect I own and prey items I give them are wild caught. I also don't have cricket or fruitfly cultures because I simply don't need them.

In Europe, exotic pet business is a fraction of what the US can offer, so in most cases, it's every exotic keeper for himself h34r:

wow, theyre all wild caught, awesome, which pets do you have?

lol

 

[Domanating]

wow, theyre all wild caught, awesome, which pets do you have?

lol

Apart from exotic pets? 1 dog, 4 cats right now, which can vary a lot, due to one of my females being a kitten factory. 2 carp fish and 2 chickens.

Edit: Maybe you could count the wild frog that decided to live in the small carp pond too

 

[MantidBro]

Apart from exotic pets? 1 dog, 4 cats right now, which can vary a lot, due to one of my females being a kitten factory. 2 carp fish and 2 chickens.

Edit: Maybe you could count the wild frog that decided to live in the small carp pond too

haha nice, i want a pet frog some day

ive got 3 cats, a bearded dragon (who unfortunately is on his way out... hes 8 years old and suffering from metabolic bone disease...), 10 mantids not counting budwing nymphs which im selling. tarantula. then ive got a huge tank full of stuff i caught outside. around 30 salamanders, stink bugs, assassin bugs, beetles of all sorts, some crickets, got an awesome camosola beetle, some snails, slugs. isopods. you know, just about everything in there, lol.

 

[Domanating]

haha nice, i want a pet frog some day

ive got 3 cats, a bearded dragon (who unfortunately is on his way out... hes 8 years old and suffering from metabolic bone disease...), 10 mantids not counting budwing nymphs which im selling. tarantula. then ive got a huge tank full of stuff i caught outside. around 30 salamanders, stink bugs, assassin bugs, beetles of all sorts, some crickets, got an awesome camosola beetle, some snails, slugs. isopods. you know, just about everything in there, lol.

That's a lot of animals you have there! Sorry for the dragon. I also have great interest in reptiles. Last year I kept a snake for a couple days. I found it severely wounded due to my cats. It didn't live long, though.

Currently I have 7 mantids, 6 of them offspring of last years mantids, the antlion, an ant farm and an aquarium filled with literally hundreds of common indian stick insects also offspring of last year's walking sticks.

Keeping Indian stick insects is madness. Females don't need to mate, infact I never seen a male in my life. They literally poop eggs like crazy. They can lay 100 or more eggs during their adult life, those 100 eggs will hatch into perfect copies of their mother that will lay another 100+ eggs each and so on!

 

[MantidBro]

That's a lot of animals you have there! Sorry for the dragon. I also have great interest in reptiles. Last year I kept a snake for a couple days. I found it severely wounded due to my cats. It didn't live long, though.

Currently I have 7 mantids, 6 of them offspring of last years mantids, the antlion, an ant farm and an aquarium filled with literally hundreds of common indian stick insects also offspring of last year's walking sticks.

Keeping Indian stick insects is madness. Females don't need to mate, infact I never seen a male in my life. They literally poop eggs like crazy. They can lay 100 or more eggs during their adult life, those 100 eggs will hatch into perfect copies of their mother that will lay another 100+ eggs each and so on!

for sure! i love animals theyre my life! thanks for the sympathy. its sad to watch an animal that ive had for that long slowly start getting worse and worse. im a big fan of reptiles as well. id kept a female garter snake for a year. i released her this year! found her when she was about 6", she was exactly a foot long when i let her go.

the budwing nymphs i have are also from my females. one died recently, and the other just turned 10 months old which is the average lifespan of this species.

oh wow you have that many walking sticks? awesome! i only ever kept one. my moms friends collected it for me, thinking it was a mantid, lol. funny. it was an adult female manomera blatchleyi. she laid quite a few eggs herself! i took them out of her container and put them in a condiment cup... and one day i dropped it, crushed it, the eggs went everywhere, they were impossible to find! i tried for a while too. theyre just so small, and roll-y. that was quite annoying. and of course all hope was truly lost once i had to vacuum. how long do they take to hatch?

 

[Domanating]

for sure! i love animals theyre my life! thanks for the sympathy. its sad to watch an animal that ive had for that long slowly start getting worse and worse. im a big fan of reptiles as well. id kept a female garter snake for a year. i released her this year! found her when she was about 6", she was exactly a foot long when i let her go.

the budwing nymphs i have are also from my females. one died recently, and the other just turned 10 months old which is the average lifespan of this species.

oh wow you have that many walking sticks? awesome! i only ever kept one. my moms friends collected it for me, thinking it was a mantid, lol. funny. it was an adult female manomera blatchleyi. she laid quite a few eggs herself! i took them out of her container and put them in a condiment cup... and one day i dropped it, crushed it, the eggs went everywhere, they were impossible to find! i tried for a while too. theyre just so small, and roll-y. that was quite annoying. and of course all hope was truly lost once i had to vacuum. how long do they take to hatch?

Nice! I heard a lot of people in the US usually keeps or kept garter snakes for being so common. I never had a decent chance to keep a snake, though.

The one I barely saved from my cats was a ladder snake. Native only to the Iberian Peninsula.

As a non-buyer, I can't keep mantids all year round. Mine only live 6 months on average but I managed to get a female going for 9. Because I live in a temperate region I cannot choose when to hatch my eggs. Every year I have a gap in mantid keeping from January to June.

Oh, yeah, there was a year where I failed to find any mantids whatsoever so I went looking for a replacement, which was a paper wasp nest, lol. Kinda dangerous I know but it was fun. I kept them for about 5 or 6 months and I wasn't stung once. In fact I was mindblown by their intelligence. In only 2 weeks they learned that I was no threat so I was able to stick my hand inside an enclosure with 7/8 wasps, inches from their nest. Some may say 'that's insane' but I say 'that's experience'

If you lived a bit closer to me I would drown you in stick insects for free

I'm not sure about your species though but mine are mostly nocturnal so it's a bit boring to keep them, which is a shame.

As for the eggs it depends. If you live in a region that has cold Winters, you can expect them to hatch in the first days of warmth. Otherwise, they hatch in about 4 months.

 

[aNisip]

Nice find! The EU sp, like you said, is a lot harder to find than its Western counterpart. Mainly because of that funnel. Literally have thousands of them in my yard...looks like some sort of minefield with all the little pitfalls. Certainly a death-zone for most species. I have seen them take down an unfortunate newborn Brown anole attracted to the bottom of the pit because of a stuggling ant, to even Monarch caterpillars that are just inching along the ground. They provided hours of entertainment growing up, tossing in the unlucky, but invasive, fire ant.

 

[Retpallylol]

I kept these when I was a kid. Very fun and amusing to watch them thrash sand at their victim. Do you know how long they stay in this larval stage? I released mine after a couple of weeks and never found out.

 

[Domanating]

I kept these when I was a kid. Very fun and amusing to watch them thrash sand at their victim. Do you know how long they stay in this larval stage? I released mine after a couple of weeks and never found out.

According to some research I did, due to the irregular chance of getting a meal, they remain in larval stage from 1 year up to 3 years.

 

[Domanating]

Surprise surprise! Yesterday I took a stroll on sandy area close to a beach and I found 2 more antilions while following their characteristic doodles on the sand. I've seen these weird long drawings in the sand before but I would never guessed they were made by antilions. One similar size to the first but way darker and the second about half the size of the others.

Even more surprising their behavior is different. The smaller one builds pits! The darker one, unlike my first antilion, prefers to drag their meal below the sand.

I'm building up footages so I can show you later but it will take a while