At home, no shopping spree is complete without visiting the pet store. I love everything about our local shop, from the rats sleeping on each other in the front, to the huge, languid snakes sitting in their water bowls in the back. And the adorable faces of the albino clawed frogs. But I usually find pets in a different part of the store- to me, some of the best pets are also “fodder” for other creatures.
When I went home for Thanksgiving break (feels like a lifetime ago, really), I was elated to find “superworms” (in the frigerator, right next to the horn worms!). Known as Zophobas morio in the entomological world, superworms are desired by herpetologists to feed their reptiles among other things. Anything that would eat a worm I suppose (My dog? Babies? Frat boys? Yes.).
I was very excited to see a particular container of the little freakishly huge larva. You see, when dealing with anything marked as “super-sized,” or other hard to believe/hokey adjectives, I get worried. My main goal with most of my insects is colony establishment, or the assurance that I will have baby insects in the future. I love baby insects. But sometimes things that are super-sized are also sterile mutants. What was so good about these superworms? Well, the container I picked also held within it a super-sized elytron. One singular wing cover was all I needed to go a little crazy with visions of an army of larger than normal beetles housed in my room.
I was hopeful. Hope can be scary sometimes, but I think it’s always better to be hopeful than hopeless. Especially when it comes to the important things in life, like baby superworms wiggling through your future.
So I took my “25 Superworms” home where I only counted 19, but that’s besides the point. New pets! I put them in a two gallon tank with some sunflower seeds, tea leaves, and a loaf of stale Italian bread. While some of them did die off, several managed to construct a network of tunnels in their yeasty new home. They all disappeared for a week or so, and then I had 5 huge tenebrionids and felt a joy not experienced by many.
Things got even better when I was poking around their new and improved tank months later to find some of the smallest meal worms I had ever seen. See?! It pays off to be hopeful. When you’re hopeful, life gives you larvae. At least I’m pretty sure that’s how it works.
What’s really exciting to me at the moment though is that the first worms are now this big, around the size my first ones were when they decided to pupate:
So… soon I could have more beetles. And that’s good! Because more beetles leads to more baby superworms. And who could ever ask for more?
CHALLENGE:
How many superworms can you spot in this photo?!