Mantis with bad breath?

[Docbones]

Ok so im new to the world of the Mantis but have been reading this thread for a month or so , and found one in a local fish store about 2 weeks ago, a 3 1/2-4 inch peacock. I have had the tank set up for well over a month just waiting to find a resident tank has about 15 hermits , 4 or 5 snails and a Chocolate Chip Starfish that was eating my corals in my reef tank.

Brought him home put him in the tank next to my computer desk and waited eagerly for carnage .....nothing. After a couple of days he has made a nice burrow under the live rock and if a hermit crab crawls in there i get a look like " Dude get this thing outta my house ". So today i went to a buddies fish store who got in WAY to many Peppermint Shrimp and he sold me several for $2 each.



LET THE CARNAGE BEGIN

He immediatly wiped out the entire flock of Peppermint Shrimp...assuming he had bad breath and the minty fresh shrimp were just the thing he needed, and has since wiped out about 1/2 the hermit crabs.

Is this normal behavior as he is getting use to the new enviorment?

He was eating some frozen foods before but nothing like this....would hate for him to eat himself to death.


And as im typing this he just peeled a snail off the glass and took him into his burrow....this thing eats more than my kids lol.

By the way think his name will be Wilson...kinda reminds me of the dude on Home Improvement peeking over the fence at me

 

[Gonodactylus]

Not eating for a few days or even a couple of weeks is common when an animal is moved.

As for the choice of diet, breaking shells takes time, effort and wear and tear. Stomatopods will nearly always take the prey that gives them the most calories for the least effort. I've published several papers on this and not only do they factor in time and effort, they also consider risk. If you give an stomatopod its choice of four snails of different sizes right in front of its burrow, it will take the one that gives it the most net calories. If you place the same sized snails a distance from the burrow so that they have to travel a fair distance to retrieve on, they take the largest cutting down the number of required trips even if they get fewer net calories.

Roy

 

[Hutton]

does that meen they are kinda of lazy? finding a way around some tasks seems pretty smart to me.

 

[Uriel]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6832128#post6832128 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Hutton
does that meen they are kinda of lazy? finding a way around some tasks seems pretty smart to me.

I'd say economical, as Dr. Caldwell said above.

His observations are spot on with my mantis, with one exception.
My G. platysoma (Already considered a mutant, due to his very outgoing nature,odd for the species, evidently) has, on several occassions, ignored delicious thawed shrimp that was dangled right in front of his face in order to continue smashing away at a hermit crab.
He really loves hermit crabs...The shrimp was fresh and all, he just looks over for a moment, grabs it, throws it away from him (My serpent star likes this quite a lot...), then continues the assault on the unlucky hermit.


Dr. Roy, thoughts? Is this normal as well? It seems that the mantis actually throws his leftovers away where the star lives, he carries them over and deposits them in front of it's waving arms. Does he recognize the star as a garbage disposal? I know that they (In the wild) throw leftovers away from their burrows (Who wants some snoopy predator sniffing 'round, wondering what that smell is, after all).

-Ron

 

[Gonodactylus]

Stomatopods can be fairly single minded and often do not like to switch foods. That could explain this behavior. Also, when we were looking tat the caloric content of snails and hermits in snail shells, not surprisingly, in the same size shell, there was more to be gained taking snails. However, many of our animals preferred hermits. It turned out that when smashing hermits, the crab would often give up and bail after only a few strikes - thus more meat per strike with hermits.

Roy