Praying Mantis?

[Yessabub]

i just caught an adult praying mantis in my yard its hard to come by one around here anyways i was wondering could i give it to my 5 month old veiled cham or is it too big? hes about 2.5 3 inches

 

[chaMELeon012409]

Aren't they a protected creature?

 

[xanthoman]

preying mantis diet consists entirely of other bugs , some of which may have pesticide residue or parasite issues, larger mantis can also bite, so i would recomend against feeding wc mantis. if you want to feed mantis to your cham, you can get an ootheca (mantis egg case) for about $5 plus shipping and in 1-6 weeks you will have hundreds of tiny mantis to feed, they are easy to hatch and raise , feed them ff, and they can be found on ebay and elsewhere http://www.mantisplace.com/ /edit/ ps no they are not protected, but some species are illegal to ship to or raise (or release) in certain areas, they are cool however /edit/ they are fast and a 3" mantis could take a sizeable chunk right out of your chams tounge ,they can take a bug 1/2 their size and cut it in half in a fraction of a second, definitely would not attempt to use a 2.5" mantis as cham food

 

[OldSkoolxReasons]

I wouldn't recommend feeding a wild caught mantis either, but I do feed my adult panthers very large mantis. If you can get your chameleon to eat something that is dead out of your hand or if you have hemostats you can hold the mantis by the neck so its alive and the cham will go for it and when you see the cham going for it just squeeze and crack its head off. My chams love them and it only takes one o two tops to fill them up. Of course my chams are adults and can handle a 6in mantis, as long as its dead. If its not dead it could take their eye out if they stick the bug from the rear instead of the face.

 

[Pumpkinface]

I've fed a few WC mantises to my veiled. as for pesticide thing, but mantis spend the day in trees and not peoples gardens(at least those here near chicago are that way) so i'm not too worried, but yes it is a very real and possibly dangerous concern. my cham was almost a foot and a half by the time i introduced a mantis to him, and he never gave any mantis long enough to fight back. BAM! tongue to the midsection, torn in half, gone. Don't listen to me about cham nutrition though, mine are all fat but I'm gonna be the rebel who like giving WC bugs to my chams. In my opinion, if your confident in your chams size, speed and power, go for it, if not, yes there is a chance the mantis can hurt your pet.

 

[SRTtoZ]

I thought Praying Mantis' were protected and you can be fined if killed...although maybe feeding is just human nature? Lol who knows.

 

[SSimsswiSS]

I raise my own mantis for food. I just moved one of my juvenile pansonii to a smaller enclosure, because he was looking a little thin. Worried he was'nt eating enough, I put two walking sticks in, three small dubia roaches, some free roaming crickets and lastly a mantis.
Mantis was consumed in seconds. Mantis get the biggest feeding reponse from my guys, even bigger than, green freshly molted grasshoppers.

 

[dtown]

Really!!??