Hey everyone, today we're gonna do a little feature of
about two of our insects that love to play dead. Now the first insect that
we've got here is the Blue Death Feigning Beetle. These guys are really
cool, and they're pretty cute too. These, these guys are native to deserts of the
southwestern United States and mainly the Sonoran Desert. Now these guys are
called Blue Death Feigning Beetles because they like to play dead when threatened, and
here we have one playing dead.
Wake up little guy. Come on.
Oh, you're okay. There you go. You're good. There you go. All better. Now they get this really
beautiful blue color. It's actually due to a wax that they secrete from the body,
and this wax keeps their body nice and moist so they don't lose moisture at all.
Um, that's one of the reasons why that you don't have to keep water in with
them. They get all the water they need from their food and the wax helps keep
them, helps them retain the moisture. Now if you spray them too much they can
actually get too, too humid, and they will actually lose that beautiful blue color
and turn black and stress out, so you don't want to keep water in there and
you want to keep it nice and dry. You don't need any additional heat for these
guys or any humidity of any sort, all you need is some dry sand and you can give
them some branches and cork bark to hide in, because they do as you can see here
they do like to hide under the cork bark during the day.
They can be fed all sorts of food you can feed them like fruits like,
fruits and veggies, like apples, carrots, and you can also feed them proteins such
as dead crickets or mealworms. So these guys are scavengers, so they basically
eat anything. So yeah, these guys are really cute, really cool, and they don't
require a very big cage at all. As you can see we keep a bunch of them in this
really small cage, so if you're looking for a smaller pet this guy will be great
for you. So our next insect that plays dead is
our Dead Leaf Mantis. Now these guys come from the country of Malaysia. These guys
are one of the larger praying mantis species, they can get, females can get
up to about three and a half inches long, the males usually reach about 2.75 to
three inches at most. So the males have the longer wings that reach past their
abdomen, while the females have shorter wings and that do not extend past their
abdomen. Now these guys are called Dead Leaf Mantids because their bodies
resemble dead leaves. Their coloring is brown and black with just splotches of
black brown and black all over them, and it kind of makes them look like dead
leaves. Like Blue Death Feigning Beetles if they get too scared
they will play dead. They will be completely motionless with either their
legs rigidly folded or stretched out, kind of looking like a dead bug. Even if
you pick them up or touch them, they will not move. As adults, these guys will also
scare predators by performing a, something called a deimatic display.
Now this is when they will stretch out their wings and they'll raise their
forelegs and kind of try to, kind of wave around and try to scare off predators. It
looks pretty cool though. So these guys don't require a huge setup, so if you're
looking for a smaller pet to keep at home these guys would be perfect. They
only need about five gallon tank as adults. All they needs is a little bit of
a higher humidity, so just make sure to spray them regularly.