Keeping Carnivorous Pets

I am that kind of person, the kind that will collect a house fly, spider, wasp, bee, basically anything that finds it's way into the house, in a cup and take it outside rather than killing it.  Well mostly the spiders I just leave inside, or if it is particularly interesting, I will capture it to keep inside and observe for awhile before releasing.  I really have no interest in killing anything, with the notable exception of ticks.  Ticks I hate, and will happily not only kill, but perhaps torture, just a little, along the way.  Getting a pet that needed to be fed something alive was something I really didn't think I could ever do.  Now I have a house full of them. It was a weird transition, the first arachnid I got, I would go to the pet store and buy a single cricket to bring home and feed.  I didn't want anymore in the house than that, and I struggled with throwing that cricket in, and did not enjoy seeing it consumed. Now I have to remind myself to give the crickets basic care, remind myself that they are in fact living creatures, not just food. I have become so desensitized to their plight, that I often go to get some from their container and realize they have no source of water.  Then I get angry with myself for treating them so badly. At the same time, I cannot bring myself to crush their heads, as is sometimes recommend for feeding spiderlings to prevent the cricket from harming very small and fragile spiders.  Instead the spiderlings get fruit flies.  I myself eat meat, so I recognize the hypocrisy, but I still cannot do it.

A year after I acquired my first arachnid, I have come to quite enjoy watching my spiders catch their prey, the excitement of watching their incredible hunting skills. They are generally really quick though, they inject venom that I like to imagine knocks the prey out and that's the end of it (I have no basis in fact for this assumption).  The mantids are a whole different story.  The 6 mantids I have left (the rest have been sold or given away) have gotten big enough to switch from fruit flies to maggots.  Tonight I really couldn't watch them eat their first maggots.  Mantids definitely do not kill their prey swiftly.  They eat pretty much everything they catch like a cob of corn, from the middle.  So those poor maggots suffer and struggle while the mantis starts at their mid section. I am very glad that I am far to big to die and the hands of a mantis.

I still take flies, spiders, wasps and bees out of the house and release them.

Praying Mantis Playing Dead

One of my mantids suddenly died.  It was a shocking situation, I barely touched the poor dude, and he just keeled over and was no more.  I couldn't figure out how this possibly could have killed him, but after poking at him a bit to confirm he really was gone, I put him aside to deal with later (does this remind of you of the drowned ant story?).  About 15 minutes later, he was not so dead.  So I looked up praying mantis playing dead on google.  I found one site with photos of a much large mantis playing dead and then looking quite alive, here:
http://www.drybrushwet.com/nature/praying-mantis-playing-dead/

and a very obscure reference, reference to a reference really, in the book

The Optical Unconscious

By Rosalind E. Krauss,

Krauss refers to writing by Roger Calloisa, French intellectual writer, who remarked that the mantis was capable of feigning death even when decapitated, and therefore, essentially dead.  Being able to pretend to be dead when you are, kind of already dead, is quite a feat indeed.  

I didn't try decapitating any of my mantids to test this out, but I did manage to get a very obvious playing dead and reawakening video, which is above, I apologize for the quality of the video, I will try to improve on it later.  I am really falling for these insects that are such incredible characters.  More to follow on the wonders of the praying mantis.