Where’s his white hood? » « Busy morning in the lab

Famine fears allayed

I’ve got all these spiders getting to a size where fruit flies don’t cut it anymore, and unfortunately, my mealworm colony crashed, I tried buying live critters online but they’re expensive and half of them died en route thanks to the bitter cold, so I was panicking that this new generation of black widows might go hungry. This is not good. I was planning to start breeding in the next week or so, and hungry females are more likely to feed than to…ummm, mate.

Ice fishing season to the rescue, just in the nick of time! This time of year a popular bait is the lowly wax worm, so I was able to get a few dozen quite cheaply at the local bait shoppe.

Spiders love these things, but I can only get them during ice-fishing season. Fortunately, that lasts until April/May, so by then my mealworms should be back on track.

Where’s his white hood? » « Busy morning in the lab

Comments

  1. says

    I wonder how long it will be before we humans (the non-billionaires) are reduced to eating meal worms. I hear they are a good source of protein, even if they offend vegetarians and probably taste like old tires.

  3. submoron says

    I once tried crickets and they were gritty dust. P Z are you going to offer a home to the thousand Tarantulas found by British customs a while ago?

  4. robro says

    Speaking of wormy spider food, I just read that Mr. Pillow Guy, Mike Lindell, is running for governor of Minnesota. How exciting.

  5. Big Boppa says

    robro@4

    You could feed a lot of spiders with one pillow guy. And probably sell a lot of tickets to an avid audience.

    Too far? I’ll show myself out.

  6. seachange says

    I found there is a surpringly (to me) large content on the internet on ‘why did my mealworm colony collapse’.

  7. imback says

    This feels like it could be an intro to a horror movie. When will the spiders notice there are some much better sources of nutrition moving around in the house than those lowly wax worms?

  8. Silentbob says

    @ ^

    I thought similar, except PZ is played by Vincent Price, and he’s desperate to find more substantial meat packets to feed to his starving children. 8-O

  9. says

    shermanj@#1:
    I wonder how long it will be before we humans (the non-billionaires) are reduced to eating meal worms.
    I was asking questions about ways the climate disaster could go, and my friend said that they thought the cockroaches and mice might survive. I think that a lot of them are going to get eaten by hungry humans.

  10. StevoR says

    @ ^ Marcus Ranum : yes, – but a lot will escape and they reproduce quickly and are able to survive onalot less than other cratures so yeah, Ireckon they’ll survive.

    Cockroaches especially are very tough too. Insects have made it through allthe amss extinctions siucne they evolved so

  12. StevoR says

    @1. shermanj : I wonder how long it will be before we humans (the non-billionaires) are reduced to eating meal worms.

    A lot of people already eat insects as at least part of their diets :

    Insects as food or edible insects are insect species used for human consumption.[1] Over 2 billion people are estimated to eat insects on a daily basis.[2] Globally, more than 2,000 insect species are considered edible, though far fewer are discussed for industrialized mass production and regionally authorized for use in food.[3][4][5][6] Many insects are highly nutritious, though nutritional content depends on species and other factors such as diet and age.[7][8] Insects offer a wide variety of flavors and are commonly consumed whole or pulverized for use in dishes and processed food products such as burger patties, pasta, or snacks.

    On consuming Mealworms specifically a bit further down in that wkipage :

    .

    To increase consumer interest in Western markets such as Europe and North America, insects have been processed into a non‐recognizable form, such as powders or flour.[20] Policymakers, academics,[5] as well as large-scale insect food producers …(snip).. focus on seven insect species suitable for human consumption as well as industrialized mass production:[6]

    Mealworms (Tenebrio molitor) as larvae
    Lesser mealworms (Alphitobius diaperinus) as larvae, mostly marketed under the term buffalo worms.
    .

    Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insects_as_food

    So, its already happening to a degree. Likely to become more popular as the social stigma fades and it becomes more normalised I’d guess.

  13. says

    Mealworm collapse happens, I think, because they’re cannibals. A boom in the larva population, which is what I want, is followed by a boom in the nasty beetle population, which have to be culled, but they produce the eggs to make more larvae, but also will eat their own babies. So it’s a balancing act.

  14. StevoR says

    @ ^ PZ Myers :Mealworms are larvae and turn into .. beetles?

    Huh. Did not kmow that. Would not have guessed Something new learnt tonight Cool. Cool-leoptera even!

  15. seachange says

    I too fell into mytho-biological folk thought. Retrospectively if I was thinking at all they metamorphosed that they would be small brown moths conveniently flying …away somehow.

  16. says

    Fortunately, the spiderlings weren’t on SNAP, especially during the shutdown. I’m not sure “mealworms” or “waxworms” qualify because they’re ready to eat (and under the new rules going into effect in a few days, in most states anything that’s ready to eat will not qualify… meaning that SNAP recipients had better have a working kitchen or stick to PB&Js).

    But speaking of food related to eight legs, consider the turkraken…
    https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSIxRhtiFKl/

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