This is a very bad piece of advice, I am sorry to see it in print. Hilde or someone else (excuse me if I have this wrong) made the much more appropriate suggestion of matching size of food item to the gecko/herp. There is never any need to crush food except in the case of sick herp.I read a book from what I feel is a very reputable Herp. keeper; I'll quote from his Gecko book "Geckos" by Jerry G. And Maleta M. Walls- page 22."There are repeated stories of large mealworms literally eating through the gut of a small lizard and exiting alive through the belly. Large mealworms should be killed by crushing the head, dipping them in hot water, or slitting then open...."
Several people (pet shop owners, Herptology students ect.) say to crush the heads of meal worms & crix for safety sake.
These folks are WAY off. No experienced herp keeper worth their salt would ever make that suggestion! Thanks to them this "old wives tale" still exists.Another qualification is health of the herp. An unhealthy herp, which sounds like Owdicat had several cases, cannot hunt food or digest properly, so food tends to eat them. If you sat still long enough and enough mealworms or crickets were around, they would certainly dine on you also!
Lastly, one should not feed a gecko more than it can deal with in about an hour. There should not be tons of food running around loose in the terrarium. If there is on a regular basis, this could stress the gecko and cause its health to fail and ultimately, ugh, be eaten by all that excess food that should not have been in the terrarium in the first place.
Julie Bergman
http://www.geckoranch.com
GGA lifetime member
