At 06:54 PM 1/1/01 -0800, Jonathan Eglinton wrote:
> On to your question. Absolutely no difference. There is nothing wrong
>with crushing the heads of prey. If you have the time and it makes you feel
>better to do it, then by all means, do it. The point is simply this, there
>is no reason to do it.
I would like to respectfully disagree here. I agree that geckos and other
aggressive demolishers of prey are pretty safe. However, I have personally
lost a pair of leopard frogs to mealworm-inflicted internal injuries---we
didn't have autopsies done, so I have only circumstantial evidence that the
mealworms were at fault, but I found the circumstantial evidence extremely
convincing. (Briefly: No symptoms other than obvious physical discomfort,
the frogs that ate of the mealworms died and the one that refused them
didn't, and other species that ate from the same batch were fine, so I
don't think it was a batch of poisoned worms.)
There's one other case I consider credible, from the long-ago on
rec.pets.herp, where someone with rather high credibility---maybe Mike
Pingleton?---reported seeing a mealworm *literally* eat its way out of one
of his garter snakes. I don't think the person, whoever they were, is
around the net any more to ask for documentation, inconveniently.
I understand that the mealworm scare is blown out of proportion, and that
many of the circumstances where it's raised are not apt. I also agree that
geckos, by and large, are one of the groups for whom the danger is really
negligible. At the same time, I get a little irritated when people dismiss
the whole business as pure, unfounded myth. If it were, I'd still have my
leopard frogs.
I don't feed mealworms often, and I snip the mandibles when I do. It's
undoubtedly overkill, but it makes me sleep better at night.
NT
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