vegan alternative for mantises?

[sueb4653]

why experiment with a live feeling animal insect

go play with some non feeling object geesh

 

[Norlin]

I think the hard part of coming up with a successful diet would be replicating their need for consuming chitin in order to develop their own exoskeleton on molts?

 

[frogparty]

In addition to the chitin, for which there is NO veggie equivalent, youd need a saturated fat that would stay solid at room temp, unlike most veggie fats that are liquid at room temp. You need protein, and you need micro and macronutrients.

In my opinion... this will not work. Buuilding a mini robot? NO! You couldnt build one small enough to encourage small nymphs to feed.

 

[Norlin]

agree with the robot part, I build a decent number of robots (helped with the local highschool in their winning the local robotics competition to go on to nationals) and in the hobby community it's pretty hard getting anything under the size of the diameter of a penny (pretty hard even getting that small). Of course, this is a robot with a brain, you can get smaller if it's brainless...ie a motor, battery and that's it, but even then you're constricted by the size of available motors and power sources (batteries). The smallest battery you're likely to get is the size of a BB fly, and if you power it remotely via a thin wire, you still need the motor which you can get from a pager or cell phone, still generally no smaller than the size of a large housefly and then you need to add food on top of that meaning you'll probably end up the size of a large BB fly and try to feed an L1 nymph which is probably half that size at most.

 

[Orin]

In addition to the chitin, for which there is NO veggie equivalent, youd need a saturated fat that would stay solid at room temp, unlike most veggie fats that are liquid at room temp. You need protein, and you need micro and macronutrients.

In my opinion... this will not work. Buuilding a mini robot? NO! You couldnt build one small enough to encourage small nymphs to feed.

The "robot" for small mantis feeding could have a small wire arm at the end of which the food would be placed in a tiny globule. It could twitch to attract attention.Mantids can't digest chitin so what would they need it for? Remember, chitin is similar to cellulose and mantids have a short digestive tract.

The idea is not at all impossible but I don't know that anyone would consider spending the time and effort it would require.

 

[jrh3]

I wonder if my mantids will eat there own legs if they step in this super jelly. Lmao.

 

[Norlin]

I had always read that chitin is a necessary part of their diet and went with that, however when you think carefully on it, it makes sense that they'd form it from other component materials rather than digest it to form it.

 

[Mime454]

I don't know why this thread is still being taken seriously. Think about it. You are honestly discussing how to build tiny robots laced with impossible food to circumvent millions of years of Evolution so that some 21st Century morals can be imposed on an insect with a "brain" the size of a pinto bean.

 

[agent A]

I don't know why this thread is still being taken seriously. Think about it. You are honestly discussing how to build tiny robots laced with impossible food to circumvent millions of years of Evolution so that some 21st Century morals can be imposed on an insect with a "brain" the size of a pinto bean.

oh their brains r MUCH smaller than that :lol:

 

[massaman]

I think the mantis is a perfect predator created to hunt and eat live prey and if it was designed to eat vegetable matter then it would of been found by now but most insects are cannibalistic or some omnivores!

 

[Norlin]

I'm not concerned with the reason behind it because I think it's a ridiculously stupid reason, I'm just curious on the execution and possibility of it.

 

[Mime454]

oh their brains r MUCH smaller than that :lol:

Maybe if you took all the ganglions and concentrated them like a brain, you'd get to the size I mean. I didn't mean just in the space between their eyes. That's also why brain was in quotes.

 

[happy1892]

This will be very hard if it is posible to give the food they need with that food. I am not reading all this! Maybe somebody already said this.........NO! fight the temptation! Haha!

 

[kitkat39]

Feed it peanut butter.. EVERYTHING seems to love peanut butter. I think beer is technically vegan as well. :-D

 

[mutrok4040]

Wouldn't it be awesome if stag beetles were carnivores?

 

[Sneaky123]

If you're serious and not just trolling, take into the consideration that a mantis could damage its mandibles on a metal robot covered in paste. Hopefully you have a lot of knowledge on proteins, sugars, and near-microscopic engineering, because achieving this in my view is near impossible. If you do find a formula that could sustain a mantis, it could be useful for sick mantids or covering their food in it before feeding.

 

[mutrok4040]

Im sure its possible to make a jelly for mantids, although I doubt it could be completly vegan.

 

[Sneaky123]

I wonder if the surviving vegan mantids would be as sickly as the human ones

 

[patrickfraser]

I wonder if the surviving vegan mantids would be as sickly as the human ones

:lol: +1

 

[Orin]

Hopefully you have a lot of knowledge on proteins, sugars, and near-microscopic engineering, because achieving this in my view is near impossible.

You probably don't realize there are artificial diets for a number of giant silk moths that feed only on specific host plants which would be much more difficult to emulate than a generalist predator diet. The mix itself would probably be very simple, it's the execution that would be difficult.