Mealworms- the truth must come out!

[dragon_tail]

we were told it was due to putting too many in a dish, where the hungry water dragon hatchies scooped up mouthfulls, and maybe didnt chew them all, of course this all relys on heat too! heat gets their digestive fluids going, without heat their stomache acids are close to dorment.

the problem was too many at once, fed at too low a tempreature... my view is that if the temp is over 28 in there then you shouldnt have a worry....but then again i crush heads as not to risk it!

 

[Kali7]

I am inclined to trust a vets opinion on this one, further substantiated by an eyewitness, as for dropping it in water.... watching, waiting... na, still alive.

 

[dragon_tail]

Eh... myth can be busted. Go take a mealie and drop it in water. It will die instantly. I have seen this myth over and over again, and they are just stories -- no pictures proving the truth of it.

you are of course entitled to your own opinion, but please dont dismiss my experiences by calling it 'just a story'. further more mate, dropping them in water is comparisson to a gastric stystem relyant on heat reactive Ph is comparible how?? couple that with the fact that they take AGES to drown in plain water where no breathable air at all is present?

 

[hornet]

Eh... myth can be busted. Go take a mealie and drop it in water. It will die instantly. I have seen this myth over and over again, and they are just stories -- no pictures proving the truth of it.

why dont you dry dropping them in room temp water? you will then see they dont die instantly, i have dropped them in and pulled them out over a minute later because the turtles didnt touch them

 

[Stealth_Raptor]

why dont you dry dropping them in room temp water? you will then see they dont die instantly, i have dropped them in and pulled them out over a minute later because the turtles didnt touch them

What species of mealworms are you using? I do know that the superworm variety under the name Zobhobas mario have been reported being able to take chunk out of people's skin. I am using a batch of Tenebrio molitor that I ue to feed birds and the room temperature right now is about 23 C.

 

[hornet]

i only have tenebrio molitor and i can tell you they do not die instantly from dropping in water. I dont know any animal that dies instantly from being dropped in water

 

[hugsta]

It can and does happen. Because it hasn't happend to you personally doesn't mean it can't happen. There is plenty of people who have seen it, whether you choose to believe it is up to you. But don't tell people it is just a story because you don't believe it.

 

[Stealth_Raptor]

That's odd. Mine just drown right away. I will look into it again later on. Either way, mealworms are not the healthiest thing for most critters due to the high fat content anyway.

The only thing I have to say -- if the mealworm incidents are indeed true then how come there are no scientific or veterinary articles supporting it? Just something to think about.

 

[wood_nymph]

The only thing I have to say -- if the mealworm incidents are indeed true then how come there are no scientific or veterinary articles supporting it? Just something to think about.

yeah that's what i mean, i've never read any papers on it happening, but i've heard of that many indcidents of it that something must be happening. just makes my wonder if its not meal worms doing the damage but something else being mistaken for meal worms. either way i don't feed them to my babies be on the safe side and if i ever do have to give them to something i crunch the head

 

[Stealth_Raptor]

yeah that's what i mean, i've never read any papers on it happening, but i've heard of that many indcidents of it that something must be happening. just makes my wonder if its not meal worms doing the damage but something else being mistaken for meal worms. either way i don't feed them to my babies be on the safe side and if i ever do have to give them to something i crunch the head

I notice a pattern... all the instances of mealworms consuming from the inside out -- the herptile in question is already dead. If that is the case, it would make sense why they occur.

 

[dragon_tail]

the dragon it occured with in my post above was ALMOST dead, but still reacted to facial annoyances (slowely!).... if you need something to blame balme heat levels, most if not all reptiles stomache acids activate in heat, if the heat is not there, neither is the astisfactory digestion!

 

[Chris1]

i think the heat is a really good point,....i kinda figured that, but had never seen it in writing,..

i also dont give them worms after theyve had a drink incase their digestive fluids are diluted,...

 

[Stealth_Raptor]

the dragon it occured with in my post above was ALMOST dead, but still reacted to facial annoyances (slowely!).... if you need something to blame balme heat levels, most if not all reptiles stomache acids activate in heat, if the heat is not there, neither is the astisfactory digestion!

Ah, sorry. I didn't see your post awhile ago. I just saw the thread and responded to the thread in question. I didn't means to discount your experiences within my post, but a lot of people keep reposting the myth without an autopsy or a vet report attached.

However I do know that with some leopard geckos, if they have giant mealworms that are too big for them -- they get impacted and their organs repture. So there is a certain element of truth there. Like they say -- every myth have some truth that got twisted or misinterepted. Another reason why the myth may have arosed is that superworms, another species of the darkling beetles, are known to chew their way out of a bucket.

Either way, it will take hours or even possibility days for even a superworm to eat its way out if it manage to survive the bite and stomach acid. By then it would had soffocated. Some people believe that what really happened is that the herptiles in the stories and other people's experiences is near-death or already dead and the superworm managed to eat its way inside the corpse. Of course they would be found with the head sticking out at the time of discovery.

 

[Sdaji]

When I was three years old I had a sand pit in the back yard which I used to play in. Tenebrioid/Darkling (the family Mealworms are in) larvae used to turn up in it and I used to love playing with them. Very rarely, one would bite me and I'd get very confused, it was rare enough for me to generally expect them not to hurt me, so the bites would always leave me quite puzzled! What does that have to do with reptiles? Not much! Well, I suppose if wild reptiles are dealing with the nasty insects out there, captive reptiles should be able to deal with mealworms... so you'd think.

Mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) are quite an innocuous species... we need those nerds from SBS to test this one and shut everyone up! Thousands of American gecko keepers who all recommend mealworms as a staple diet don't seem to be enough! I personally think that worrying about mealworms eating their way out of your live reptiles is a bit like worrying about worms being in apples, because you might cough while you're eating one, causing the worm to be lodged in your sinus cavities, and if you just happen to have an open sore in your sinus cavity the worm might squirm into it and get to your brain, causing sudden death.

Hatchling lizards, particularly dragons are prone to dropping dead no matter what you do. It is particularly common for dragons to hatch out and not really thrive, slowly losing condition and becoming weak, it's then that people often force feed them and the force feeding kills them, regardless of what is fed. This is fairly common in hatchling snakes which are left too long before being force fed their first meals - a severely emaciated hatchling snake will quickly die after it is force fed, whether it is given a pinky, fish, mince meat, eat or even a mealworm! People have reptiles die after eating crickets, cockroaches, lettuce, nothing... but I'll recommend that you don't feed your reptiles mealworms, because that way you can't blame me when they happen to die of some unrelated cause soon after eating them!

For the record, I've been using mealworms to feed frogs and lizards for almost 20 years and I'm yet to have one cause a problem. If I happen to have a mealworm kill something now, I'll figure that it's probably going to be another 20 years before I have another problem with them and other insects couldn't be much safer than that anyway.

Mealworms are also yummy and nutritious, which is handy when you've bred too many and don't feel like making a trip to the shops.

 

[dragon_tail]

i think at this point we really need to stop refering to it as a myth dude

 

[wood_nymph]

i think at this point we really need to stop refering to it as a myth dude

my fault on the myth label i was watching myth busters, lol

 

[Stealth_Raptor]

You can continue to use the word myth if you want. The defination of myth in this specific case is that is unproven or is without proven documentation, which is same issues MythBusters is addressing anyway. It does not have to be false.

In this case, we do not know the reason behind these incidents. There are too many factors involved to eliminate it to one single cause, especially if we do not know everything that is going on with the reptile's body at a given time. The only way to confirm is if an expert dissect the body and determine a cause of death.