thony devils
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Dicco
Very Well-Known Member
You can keep em, but they're a hell of a lot of work. Eat about 3000 ants a weeks from memory.
M
MrBredli
Guest
They will also eat hatchling crickets.. still alot of crickets though.
Dicco
Very Well-Known Member
Err.. where did you hear that, they only eat about 6 species of small black ant, not crickets.MrBredli said:
fishead
Well-Known Member
Howdy Jason, on a class two nonvenomous licence in NSW you can keep anything nonvenomous as long as it's from a legal documented source.
There used to be a species list but it changed a while back.
You have to have had your class one licence for two years and just apply for the class two nonven. No references necessary.
Pretty sure that's right mate.
Bye, Steve.
There used to be a species list but it changed a while back.
You have to have had your class one licence for two years and just apply for the class two nonven. No references necessary.
Pretty sure that's right mate.
Bye, Steve.
M
MrBredli
Guest
I know of someone who kept them successfully on a diet based almost entirely on baby crickets.
Reptilia
Well-Known Member
Im pretty sure they keep a few thorny devils at Melbourne museum. They feed them from an entire colony of black ants, which are held in one of those transparent glass containers where you can see how the colony has been built. I also heard they go through several thousand black ants a week. Their food must need more maintenance than the lizards themselves...
Cheers. Lance.
Cheers. Lance.
There's a picture in my gallery of one held in captivity in Melbourne, it's fed captive bred ants. People are keeping them in Europe now, a few people have managed to get them to eat crickets, but most of them have not survived on the diet. A few people are claiming to be doing it successfully now, but ants are probably easier than producing that many pin head crickets.
They're one of and possibly the most spectacular lizards in the world, but I wouldn't be willing to keep them unless I had servants!
Here's a couple I've seen in the wild
They're one of and possibly the most spectacular lizards in the world, but I wouldn't be willing to keep them unless I had servants!
Here's a couple I've seen in the wild
Dicco
Very Well-Known Member
Where's the pic of where it climbed up the tree Sdaji 
Some things are too controvecial for this site, Dicco. Unfortunately, many members of APS are unable to appropriately appreciate certain things... arboreal Molochs, halloween turnips, ice-cream sculptures, penguin pictures, earth worms, etc etc :lol:
We saw heaps up trees on that trip! We took about 100 pictures between us
SLACkra
Very Well-Known Member
i would have thought it would be amazingly easy to cultivate the ants. just give em some off cuts of meat and away they go!
by black ant do you mean those small annoying lil ones that tend to invade people kitchens?
don't you have to have a licence other than basic and advanced, like a display type thing...(my brains bit slow today)
by black ant do you mean those small annoying lil ones that tend to invade people kitchens?
don't you have to have a licence other than basic and advanced, like a display type thing...(my brains bit slow today)
Taronga is occassionally presented with ones that 'accidentally' come back in someone's suitcase. They're normally sent straight back to the NT because they are so difficult to maintain.
Cultivate an ant colony as food? It's possible, but Devils eat several hundred ants at a single sitting. For every Devil you own, your colony would need to produce a minimum of a thousand ants every few days. That's assuming you have one of the species they feed upon.
While moving furniture and possesions around my house recently (to accommodate painters) I found some old journals that I hadn?t catalogued, and one of the articles in one of the issues was about Molochs. And an interesting article it was indeed discussing, amongst other things, the feeding behaviour of these reptiles.
Apparently the author, one Ella McFadyen of North Sydney, had a few Molochs sent to her from Alice Springs and she attempted to acclimatise them to Sydney with some degree of success. The article was not very scientific (and some of her behaviour wasn?t scientific either) but it does yield some interesting observations.
Ms Fadyen identified three different types of ant in her garden, distinguished by size and behaviour (unfortunately, she doen?t identify them by name). Of the three, she describes one as being ?rejected by the lizards?, another as being ?the staple food? and the last as a swift-moving species that was ?considered palatable by the Molochs when they could catch it.?
The lizards fed by darting their tongue in and out rapidly and didn?t like any foreign substance mixing with their food. They were often seen to clean their tongue by licking young green leaves. Furthermore, ?they will not eat ants carrying a burden save the larvae of their own species or grains of sugar?. Apparently they like the sugar. However, the lizards refused to touch a non-moving item like a dropped ant egg, or even a stationary ant. Nor would they eat an ant with wings.
She states that when feeding ?one thousand ants at a meal is by no means an exceptional number.? And later: ?The reason why such large quantities of ants are swallowed at a meal, day after day right through summer, is because the chitinous body-shell and legs of the ants are not digested. The creatures are crushed against the bony mouth-plate of the Moloch (distinct clicks can be heard as the lizards feed) and after the juices have thus been extracted, the ants are expelled almost whole.?
Ms Fadyen reports that Molochs would not displace another from a good feeding place, and when a weakly individual was placed with several others she later noticed a larger individual sharing an anthole with the weker one. Apparently this is not uncommon ?for they sometimes feed alternately, each taking an ant in turn as it emerges from the hole.?
She also notes a ?fondness for moisture?and a ?fondness for bathing?, the lizards getting into saucerfuls of water and drinking with the mouth. She further reports they have an ?enjoyment of the steamy earth after a thunderstorm?.
There is also a discussion in the article on the intelligence of the lizards, but it appears to be subjective, a little anthropomorphic, and anecdotal. My impression from her notes is that instinct and habituation is being misinterpreted as primitive intellect.
I should also stress that I am not posting this to encourage anyone to keep Molochs, more for people who would be interested to reading things like this. Indeed, the author says the Molochs required a lot of attention.
Hix
Source: McFadyen, E. 1937 ?The Moloch horridus. Feeding habits and evidence of intelligence.? Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales for 1936-7. pp:29-31
Cultivate an ant colony as food? It's possible, but Devils eat several hundred ants at a single sitting. For every Devil you own, your colony would need to produce a minimum of a thousand ants every few days. That's assuming you have one of the species they feed upon.
While moving furniture and possesions around my house recently (to accommodate painters) I found some old journals that I hadn?t catalogued, and one of the articles in one of the issues was about Molochs. And an interesting article it was indeed discussing, amongst other things, the feeding behaviour of these reptiles.
Apparently the author, one Ella McFadyen of North Sydney, had a few Molochs sent to her from Alice Springs and she attempted to acclimatise them to Sydney with some degree of success. The article was not very scientific (and some of her behaviour wasn?t scientific either) but it does yield some interesting observations.
Ms Fadyen identified three different types of ant in her garden, distinguished by size and behaviour (unfortunately, she doen?t identify them by name). Of the three, she describes one as being ?rejected by the lizards?, another as being ?the staple food? and the last as a swift-moving species that was ?considered palatable by the Molochs when they could catch it.?
The lizards fed by darting their tongue in and out rapidly and didn?t like any foreign substance mixing with their food. They were often seen to clean their tongue by licking young green leaves. Furthermore, ?they will not eat ants carrying a burden save the larvae of their own species or grains of sugar?. Apparently they like the sugar. However, the lizards refused to touch a non-moving item like a dropped ant egg, or even a stationary ant. Nor would they eat an ant with wings.
She states that when feeding ?one thousand ants at a meal is by no means an exceptional number.? And later: ?The reason why such large quantities of ants are swallowed at a meal, day after day right through summer, is because the chitinous body-shell and legs of the ants are not digested. The creatures are crushed against the bony mouth-plate of the Moloch (distinct clicks can be heard as the lizards feed) and after the juices have thus been extracted, the ants are expelled almost whole.?
Ms Fadyen reports that Molochs would not displace another from a good feeding place, and when a weakly individual was placed with several others she later noticed a larger individual sharing an anthole with the weker one. Apparently this is not uncommon ?for they sometimes feed alternately, each taking an ant in turn as it emerges from the hole.?
She also notes a ?fondness for moisture?and a ?fondness for bathing?, the lizards getting into saucerfuls of water and drinking with the mouth. She further reports they have an ?enjoyment of the steamy earth after a thunderstorm?.
There is also a discussion in the article on the intelligence of the lizards, but it appears to be subjective, a little anthropomorphic, and anecdotal. My impression from her notes is that instinct and habituation is being misinterpreted as primitive intellect.
I should also stress that I am not posting this to encourage anyone to keep Molochs, more for people who would be interested to reading things like this. Indeed, the author says the Molochs required a lot of attention.
Hix
Source: McFadyen, E. 1937 ?The Moloch horridus. Feeding habits and evidence of intelligence.? Proceedings of the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales for 1936-7. pp:29-31
alexr
Well-Known Member
Could not agree with you more Jason.Jason said:
What a classic. Sdaji (must of had pretty cold hands to make it do that :shock: )
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