Using fish as feeders?

[Melophile]

Anything wrong with using fish as feeders? I've seen a couple videos on YouTube of people feeding tiny fish to their mantises.

There's a small pond behind my backyard where I could easily catch some small minnows.

 

[Rick]

Mantids don't typically eat prey such as fish. Some people don't agree with the feeding of vertebrates to invertebrates. For that reason let's refrain from posting the videos. This topic has been done before too if you want to search and find the old posts.

 

[Domanating]

I once posted a video here waaayy back of one of my mantids eating a small Lizard. It's not pretty to watch, specially because I like reptiles. I only do so when I have shortage of insects.

Call me a sadistic but I still find it intriguing to watch.

Feeding vertebrates to invertebrates could be considered morally wrong I suppose but I don't think it would harm your mantids at all. It's just not something they would eat in the wild.

Look it this way:

For a normal Human being with normal feelings and emotions, the closer you identify yourself to a certain animal the more you'll react with what that specific animal is going through.

So probably people in general would complain more about a small mouse suffering than a bird, (given that we relate more to the mouse) more for the bird than a reptile and more for the reptile than a fish. This order may vary depending on what animal people like the most.

For me personally as fisherman I'm perfectly fine with you giving fish to your mantids.

I completely deviated from the topic didn't I? So yeah, Your mantids shouldn't complain much if you give them fish although we don't know what would happen if you gave them fish for their entire lives.

 

[Melophile]

Honestly, I don't see anything morally wrong with it. I'm pretty sure they're are plenty of mantises out in the wild eating vertebrates. Yes, their main diet are invertebrates, but I'm pretty sure if they had the chance and a vertebrate walked right in front of their raptors, they would snag it. I don't know, that's just the way I see it.

Anyways, I'm not going to debate whether it is morally right or wrong; everyone has their own set of beliefs. My main focus when I created this thread was for the sake of my mantises's health. I thought may be the bones could mess up their bodies, or fish don't have the proper nutrients, or can mantises get food poisoning the same way humans get salmonella from eating raw/undercooked meats. I wasn't planning on making fish a major part of their diet. Just something to snack on here and there since the minnows in the pond near my house can be easily acquired at no cost.

 

[Danny.]

You can easily acquire flies, moths, wasps ect at no cost.