{"id":2699,"date":"2020-12-11T16:09:51","date_gmt":"2020-12-11T16:09:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keepingbugs.com\/?p=2699"},"modified":"2021-10-09T22:18:40","modified_gmt":"2021-10-09T22:18:40","slug":"what-does-praying-mantis-eat-a-practical-food-feeding-guide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keepingbugs.com\/what-does-praying-mantis-eat-a-practical-food-feeding-guide\/","title":{"rendered":"What Do Praying Mantises Eat? A Practical Food & Feeding Guide"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Curious what a praying mantis eat? Their strangely shaped forelegs already give us a clue. But knowing what they eat, would be especially needed knowledge in the case when you consider keeping a praying mantis as a pet. What should you feed them, and how much and how often would be best for feeding a praying mantis? In this practical guide, we will discuss it all: feeding of and food for praying mantises. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Praying mantises are carnivorous hunters, and will exclusively eat on live prey. Their diet mostly exists of insects, but there are known cases of praying mantis feeding on small rodents, lizards, frogs, and even hummingbirds. An adult praying mantis eat up to 6 insects a day on average. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Don’t expect that you once in a while need to feed your pet praying mantis a hummingbird. No, there they thrive perfectly on live insects. But there is so much more to learn about feeding praying mantises, so let’s continue!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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A look at the praying mantis diet<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

To better understand what proper food is for a praying mantis, we first need to look at what they eat in the wild. Learning from natural food sources makes the best diet for captive pets. And the food is an essential part of keeping praying mantises healthy and alive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wild diet<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Praying mantises are carnivorous, which means they solely feed on prey items. Mantises are quite astonishing hunters that primarily feed on live insect prey. For almost any species, live insects are the main food source on which they hunt or that they ambush. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

They feed on prey that they can capture, so oftentimes their prey is not larger than themselves. They hunt on vision, where some species are wait and ambush, where others will actively hunt for food. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some species have developed opportunistic feeding methods, in which they feed on small vertebrates or hummingbirds. But they don’t catch just anything that lay in their grasps. No, praying mantises quickly learn what prey size they can successfully catch, but also learn to identify different insects. They can distinguish insects that are toxic or unpalatable. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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