I've been taught through personal experience that live mealworms will eat anything. Even plastic... Well my thinking has now changed. Live mealworms will eat ALMOST anything.
To be fair I wasn't actually feeding the live mealworms for this test. I did "warm up" to room temperature some worms and placed a small carrot into their container today. I'll let them eat that until we close the Wild Bird Center of Johns Creek @ 7pm tonight. Then it's back into the fridge for the week or until they are sold.
At the same time I was feeding the worms I had a container of Darkling Beetles which are the "adult" version of the live mealworms. The worm is actually the "larvae" of their complete cycle of metamorphosis. The beetles are veracious eaters and will crowd a dinner plate quickly.
I do know that the Darkling Beetle will eat carrots, lettuce, apples, potatoes, and even cheese (don't ask and don't do it - makes for stinky bugs). This time I just happen to have a couple of asparagus stalks which I placed into the container. I expected the beetles to climb all over the stalk like they do with carrots. I noticed right away they were not excited about this food. I placed the lid on the container then shut off the light.
Typically what happens next when the light is turned off is that all the beetles that are buried in the wheat bran head right to new food source. I expected, once the light was turned back on, that hundreds of darkling beetles were crawling over the asparagus. But they didn't. I then threw in a couple of carrots and BAM! The beetles were on it.
The moral of the story is: Live mealworms will eat ALMOST anything. Occasionally you may find a food they don't approve of. No sweat just switch that out with a couple of carrots and you are back on track.
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