Lou,
I too am curious if their is something in ants that HLs require. I'm not so sure their is. It's true HLs have adapted to eat numerous small prey and the ability to withstand venom but this is probably because their is less competition for this food source not because they require the ants. Many people thought HLs required formic acid but this was proven false. Most the ant species HLs feed on don't contain formic acid.

In my case and many others I speak with find it to be much cheaper to feed ants than to buy crickets all the time. In most areas their is usually an ant species safe for HLs to eat and they can be collected free of charge. So I don't think it would be economical to use crickets.

I personally would like to run an experiment to see what diet captive HLs do the best on. If you have raised hatchlings you should know they are very intemidated by ants. Mine don't even eat that many ants even though they are very small but they go nuts over the pinheads. Some species do really well on mini mealworms making up most the diet but this is species specific. I recently found out P. cornutum does not do well on the mini mealworms.
Dogsand cats didn't feed on bagged food before they were domesticated. Their should be nothing wrong with people trying to find the best diets for captive HLs. To experiment on varied diets is beneficial. I have personally found my HLs stay much healthier on a varied diet rather than a strictly ant diet with the exception of P. solare. They do fine on a high ant diet

Also I wanted to add I have a group of young HLs that eat50 % crickets and 50 % crickets. When I crush their scats it looks like they eat 100% ants because the soft bodied crickets have been digested. Analyis of the gut content is the only way to accrutely measure the percentage of ants. Just some thoughts but all in all I think a study to find out what diet is best for HLs in captivity is greatly needed.

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