Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Hey all- when I bought mealworms for my leo today, the salesperson recommended that I cut off the mouths of the worms before feeding, or else the worm might eat out the stomach of the leo! I'm curious about this, because I've seen many people on this forum talk about mealworms but never mention this.

I'm perfectly willing to cut the heads off if necessary, but my concern is that if I cut them and the leo doesn't eat them right away, I'll just have a lot of dead mealworms.

Should I be cutting the heads off? My leo is only a few months old, so maybe that makes a difference.

You know, you probably have a better chance of winning the lottery than that...

My leos (when they eat lol) only eat the squirmy ones, so they wouldn't be much use dead.

And I think the one or two reported cases were either inconclusive or myths

:

I can't give you any first-hand facts, but a friend of mine said his bearded dragon was around 12 years old when it died from an incompletely chewed mealworm eating its way out of the dragon's stomach. Also there was a post a little while ago on this forum about a leo violently dying and then a small mealworm crawling out of the ear socket afterwards (with speculation the mealie got in the ear socket and started chomping around).
If it's true that these bugs are a danger or not I can't say for sure, but I'm just glad my Leo refuses mealies and will only eat crickets.
You could try superworms, less chitin in their outer layer and no horror stories about them (that I've heard).
Good luck!
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0.1.0 Normal Leopard Gecko: Mala Ala
1.1.0 White's Tree Frogs: Cabo and Wabo
0.1.0 Bearded Dragon: Igor
8.0.0 Betas: Ghost, Magnum, Anaxagoras, Teriyaki, Tsunami, Fruity, Misty, and Cobalt

There will always be story's about meal worms. There worms and they freak some people out. The fact of the matter is once a meal worm gets chomped and squished by being eaten and then sits in stomach acid it's not going to eat it's way out of anything. just take one and squish it and see how long it moves for. That ontop of the fact that the stomach lining is fairly thick and would take a longer amount of time to chew through than anything could survive in a stomach.

If the mealy crawled into the leo's ear then that was a mistake on the keepers part. Keep the mealys in a dish and don't allow them into the substrate it just causes problems.

Pet stores suggest to this to people because they are uninformed and don't want any people accusing them of killing there animals with worms.