Yogurt

[Digger]

Yes. I'm the first to agree feeding our pets products they would not find in their natural environment, can be risky. Some are tried and true, like honey, or a small bit of banana. So this morning, I'm feeding my adult female Tenodera sinensis (Lea - The Queen of Autumn) some mealworms and darkling beetle pupae. I'm feeding myself some Greek strawberry yogurt. I read the ingredients, nothing alarmingly artificial. So I put some on the tip of my spoon and brought it up to her antenna (which began to undulate like crazy). She plunged her face into the yogurt and grabbed the spoon. Since this product is loaded with protein, I thought it might be a little beneficial (although protein synthesis is complex and surely is much different in inverts). Also, there are a lot of questions whether mantids have any ability to "smell" or taste. The taste question leans heavily to "no" since I don't believe they have any organs with which to recognize flavor. Most owners say it just comes down to texture. Regardless, she went bonkers for the yogurt. But I kept the quantity of the offering very low.

 

[Sticky]

Good for you! Nevermind what others say. I give mine milk sometimes. They like it and no one has died from it. It helped keep my old mantis Sticky alive so its not bad.

 

[mantisboxer]

Good for you! Nevermind what others say. I give mine milk sometimes. They like it and no one has died from it. It helped keep my old mantis Sticky alive so its not bad.

i thought about trying milk but i wasnt sure because wouldnt the calcium make their exo skeleton harder leading to mismolts if not im going to definitly try it

 

[Sticky]

Sticky was already an adult so I cant say how much is too much. But I think a small drink once in awhile will not hurt. Every day would most likely cause problems.

 

[Rick]

They will do it with anything moist.

 

[Ranitomeya]

She is most likely able to taste what was in the yogurt--there would be both sugar and protein available in it.

Taste is just how our brains perceive the signals received from our encountering simple and complex molecules both alone and in mixture. Insects can "taste" in that they have similar capabilities in sensing the chemical makeup of substances in a rudimentary way. They may not be tuned to sense the same assortment of substances and may not perceive them the same way, but they can still detect differences in chemical makeups of things enough to know whether it's worth eating or not. In Humans, the sense of taste is split into sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami. Sweetness is caused by sugar and sugar analogs bonding to receptors; sour is caused by the detection of hydrogen atoms, salty is caused by ions directly depolarizing cells as they move through ion channels in receptors; bitter is caused by a variety of bitter substances binding to receptors; and umami is the binding of glutamic acid and amino acids to receptors.

Sense is very interesting in that it's all reliant not on organs, but the specialized hair cells designed to pick up stimuli in those organs. Whether it's smell, taste, touch, sound, or something visual does not matter--everything we detect is through very specialized hair cells that send signals to our brain that we then perceive in a certain way. Insects are covered in a variety of sensory organs designed to pick up on various sensory stimuli. Their sensitive antennae are covered in microscopic hairs responsible for detection of smell, taste, touch, and sound. For example, male mosquitoes use their feathery antennae for the detection of the sound of the females' wings; male moths use their feathery antennae to detect the tiniest amount of the female's pheromones; and cockroaches can use their antennae to smell and taste their way to food objects as well as feel for vibrations.

 

[Krissim Klaw]

When it comes to dairy, I just assume let the mother mantis do the work and suckle her nymphs.