Posted by:
Calparsoni
at Sat May 7 11:46:02 2011 [ Email Message ] [ Show All Posts by Calparsoni ]
When I lived in longwood north of Orlando. I used to watch this coyote all the time that would sit underneath a neighbors yard light at night and catch and eat bugs.
It used to do this all the time. Based on some of the logic I'm seeing here people would think that according to that observation that they should feed their dog a diet of insects.
Obviously that would be stupid and it also brings to light making assumptions about an animal's diet based on limited observations ( ie a certain author who comments on here.). I used to watch this behavior quite often sometimes several nights in a row. If I knew nothing about wild canids I would think all they ate was bugs based on this observation. We know that this is obviously not the case and that coyotes eat a varied diet of animals from bugs on up to the young of large vertebrate prey and lots of things in between.
Looking at the entire picture we can see that coyotes (and other wild canids) can survive on many types of food that meet their basic requirement of animal protein.
As a monitor keeper you should keep that in mind and rather than making diet the complex issue I see people trying to do on here, simplify their diet and concentrate on other aspects of their husbandry that need more attention.
Trust me if you keep water monitors you need to be more worried about housing, proper temps and providing them with adequate clean water (also at proper temps) than whether or not they should eat bugs. Especially when they can do just fine eating rats which are much cheaper and more efficient for a large reptile than bugs.
[ Hide Replies ]
|