Nathan Tenny wrote:
> 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.
Sorry to be irritating ;-), but as you pointed out, the gex are our focus here,
I make no claims on other types of herps regarding mealworm mythology... Surely
the blame here must go back to the source of the leopard frogs (provided that
was indeed the cause of death), it is the breeder's responsibility to tell the
customer to feed what food items, what size and how often. If there are common
feeding mistakes for certain types of herps, a good breeder will cover that too
if they are have that knowledge. No doubt "frog people" would know the answer to
that one. Chuck Powell, the president of the American Dendrobatid Society comes
to mind. If he doesn't know, he knows someone who does. Let me know if you would
like to get in touch with him.
> 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
>
Just a note, most large scale leopard gecko breeders feed primarily mealworms or
only mealworms to their leopards of all ages. Mine get mostly crickets and
occasionally mealworms.
Julie Bergman
http://www.geckoranch.com
GGA lifetime member
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