Wide arm mantis eating orchid mantis

[Gabrieloak67]

Yen.

I'm with you, best to recycle what you can with dead or dying mantids. i suppose morally no different than feeding it any of the hundreds of other crickets, flies, moths etc. However, even when i see a mantid being eaten on TV (by a chameleon or scorpion or whatever) I feel slightly haunted, like I'm watching some kind of abuse..I guess I've been way to fascinated with mantids for way to long!

 

[yen_saw]

Actually, i only feed mismolted mantis that didn't look too unhealthy or infected by diseases. I wouldn't recommend feeding dead or dying mantis to another healthy mantis especially when the cause of dead (or dying) mantis is in question. You never know what kind of illness they can pass on to another mantis. I also wouldn't recommend feeding injured mantis to another because they might still post a threat and attack another mantis. The reason I fed him (The adult orchid male) to the Wide Arm female was the cause of mismolting is due to oversparying on the molting mantis. Besides, the adult male orchid mantis is no match to the Wide Arm female so in no way he can inflict any damage to her.