During some school presentation, Charles was introduced to mealworms which are centipede like larva of a beetle. They are commonly used as food for other pets, such as lizards. Charles became obsessed with them and Mom, being the soft touch she is, decided to buy some for Charles while they were at the pet store last week. No mealworms were available, but the store did have “super worms” or Zophobas Morio pictured at the left, roughly life sized.
Mom bought a packet of 25 live zophobas, plus worm food and worm drink, put them all together in a Tupperware container and life was good for Charles, Alice, and the zophobas. Mom, unfortunately, is stuck cleaning out the container every few days, although there has been only one worm death, leaving 27 (bonus!) live worms. The worm drink is interesting, it’s basically very watery jello. The worm food looks like sawdust to me, and doubles as bedding. I have suggested using the worms for the proper function and feeding some to Poly without success.
Charles and Alice take down the container every day or two and watch the worms for a bit. It doesn’t look like 27 worms to me, but Mom claims to have picked them all out with chopsticks and counted and it’s way easier to believe than count myself.
Hopefully, they will reproduce, so then you can have even more!
The reproduction is somewhat odd. If you have a number of them, they’ll remain in larval form. If you separate them, they will pupate and turn in to beetles, which then mate to lay eggs. This is a big reason that this species is a favorite because the population level is so easy to control.
That is more than I really wanted to know about the sex life of those lil critters.…
Wait…will that work on the boyen?? Keep them in a tight group and they will never.….never mind…it was just a thought.
What, you saw all those cute little girls at the Middle School picnic and thought “I could never inflict my boys on those sweet things”?
Anyway, if you want that effect, just stop forcing them to wash.