stick insects and preying mantis

can chameleons eat these? ive got a veiled and want to vary his diet as crickets locusts and mealworms are getting boring.

Yes. Stick bugs are very good for them.

ok thanks can they preying mantis pinch him at all though?

If a mantis is fairly large, with nice sharp forelegs, its possible to cause a bit of scratch damage to the chameleon. Some people therefore remove those legs. Poor mantis.

my chameleons love mantis', none have ever scratched mine. Too slow for my chams, before the mantis knows it he's inside the mouth lol

aren't american walking sticks poisonous? the large females put out some type of chemical defense that is pretty nasty

i thought that it would be all over for the mantis before it knew what hit it so i guess ill give it a go. my chameleon would love some new treats.

My chameleon has never suffered injury from a mantis. go for it.

The two sp. you're posting about are always seen as prey items in wild footage! I strongly agree these two types of insects are good for them.

Not sure what the mantids eat in the wild in maddy, but the phasmids I'm sure eat just a few sp. of plant matter.

I get chinese ooths, very cheap on ebay, hatch them out, and feed them off to my baby panther chameleons.

Chinese oothecae hatch on average, 200 nymphs. 75% of these nymphs die after the first few days, so better use these when you have a good size clutch of babies.

Plus Chinese oothecae can be stored in the fridge which is awesome. This sp. is found in NJ, I recently found an adult male!

I've fed $40.00 mantid nymphs to some of my panthers because the expensive mantids mis molted horribly. LOL Cannot believe some of my male panthers have got the pleasure to eat a large, expensive mantis!

I trim off their claws, just because they have sharp teeth-like spikes.

Unfortunately stick bugs aren't sold openly on American forums.

For any of those who live in a warm climate, getting Chinese oothecae and releasing some is always a plus!

Next summer I am going to hang up 40 or more Chinese oothecae on my deck, hoping I will see more than 1 adult by September!

Yeah I tried to release some and see if I could catch them later. I never saw any after the 1st day of release. But i only hatched 2 sacs. If you do 40 sacs you should see some i would think. Or else every bird and anole in the neighborhod will be hanging at your house.

lol yeah I hear yeah, not many Anoles in NJ though, however, birds are abundant!

Right down the street from my house, is a dead end that leads to a big park, that also is close to a school with tons of wooded areas.

Since they'll hatch right in my backyard, I bet a lot of them will get to the more wooded area.

I should totally hatch another 30 or so Ooths around a couple parks.

Chinese oothecae are extremely cheap during the spring time so I am sure I could get them at like $.75 cents per ooth.

I always get a sad feeling when I find a dead mantis here in NJ, and it was obviously stepped on with force. Totally flattened. Everytime I find one dead, it is dead because of a human.

I only found one full grown adult mantis this year. Ive found/caught quite a few of the large 2-3" katydids though. My guys go crazy for them. Its just starting to get cool down here. I figure i got a good month or so of collecting time left. Then its strictly store bought or home grown bugs for a while....

in london england its too cold for anything interesting to live here lol.

many years ago I bought an egg sac and threw them out in the bushes hoping that they'd finish off the aphids on my roses... not too long after I saw one GIANT praying mantis, and never ever saw one again prior to or after that.... good to think that it did indeed hatch!, right?