1/13/2022: The gluttonous feeding habits of Tarachodes sp.

I’m not one to turn down free bugs, and taxa that become new favorites are even better.

Over the last few months myself and a few other bug vendors at the local expo have formed a little nucleus of invertebrate keepers. With the show’s changing demographics this has been interesting to experience since the hordes of crested geckos and ball pythons are slowly shifting over to miscellaneous reptiles, a lot of supplies and unrelated collectibles, and primarily tarantula sellers.

Josh (whose last name eludes me) has been gifting me some random mantids every show, and this time he threw a potential subadult male Tarachodes species my way to go with a female he had given me earlier. They’re not quite his thing, and by mantid hobby standards not very dazzling, but I’ve taken quite a liking to them with their hardiness, roachy morphology, and now their feeding habits.

It seems when you live in places where food may not be readily available, it’s advantageous to be ravenous when you do find prey. I was surprised to watch the subadult male not only readily strike at very large prey, but over the course of about 8 hours he tore through the large Pycnoscelus nymph offered and somehow incorporated all of it into his body cavity. More surprisingly, he didn’t look completely full and ate several “dessert” fruit flies after that.

My fondness for these roachoid mantids grows ever stronger and I think these Tarachodes will be a consistent favorite for me.

-Kyle