Beetle broadcast (2)
Yiopheheee beetles
Yyeeeehgfgh beetles
Ahem. Hello, good evening everyone! I'm your host Dippa and you're watching BEETLE BROADCAST
These beetles have brought me so much joy, I seriously love them!! They do stress me out, but in the way a new parent gets stressed out over everything their kid does 😅
so for tonight's update:
The little rainbow stags have livened up a lot since they arrived last Friday, they're digging around and eating everything and I even caught Khepri mating with two of the females! Needless to say, they seem very much at home.
They do seem a bit spoiled, they clearly prefer eating beetle jelly over bananas. I thought they might dislike the food tray the bananas were on but I saw them eat beetle jelly off of the tray so they really just want that sweet sweet jelly.
I am currently facing the challenge of getting a good breeding log for the beetles because they've been trying to make some larvae the last couple of days but they don't have a good environment to lay their eggs and I'm afraid that might stress them out. I can't buy a proper breeding log anywhere though and my white rot wood hasn't arrived yet for some reason, so I'm going to have to make a trip into the forest for some delicious gourmet wood :>
no pictures today because I'm trying to get them a bit used to handling but Viola specifically will NOT let go of my finger at all. I think she might be scared to fall or just scared of me but she doesn't mind getting on my finger that much, she just will not get off and I can't pry her off because that hurts both of us and even nudging her off can make her clench so hard she picks my finger with her little hooks.
Oh yeah and the male I think is Khepri (Jazz's marking rubbed off so I'm not super sure) is super active looking for food and mates at night, but (presumably) Jazz hangs out at the beetles jelly constantly and will not move around until its time to dig into the substrate and go sleep so I don't believe we will be getting many larvae from him.
I made a little poll in the last beetle broadcast post (which I accidentally posted in the bugblr community oopsy (also why is it in content label review what's wrong with the post???))
I asked whether you thought it was ethical to keep beetles in captivity. Fifty percent of voters said yes, always. Zero percent said no, never. Thirty seven and a half percent said only if they're bred in captivity and the remaining twelve point five percent thought it was nuanced but only one of them left a comment.
I personally think they should be bred in captivity but as I read the comment left on the post (idk if they want to be named so I wont), I realised that it was more important to me that the animals are ethically sourced. I probably won't ever buy an animal that was taken from the wild but even beetles that were born into captivity can be from an unethical source. For example, you wouldn't buy a pet from one of those backyard breeders who neglect their animals, right? I think it's the exact same with beetles. If they're kept in an unhealthy environment you will het unhappy and unhealthy beetles and I won't give my money to people who keep unhappy beetles.
Ok I think that post was long enough lmao
I don't have a poll to insert here, might come up with something later..