What kind of bugs can we grow?
June 10, 2020 8:07 AM Subscribe
My kid (6 yo) is super into nature. She wants to grow bugs and observe them. We have grown caterpillars, ladybugs, and tadpoles. We are looking for new ideas and anything else that is nature-inspired. We grow seeds and have done owl pellets and grew a slime mold and grew bacteria. We also observe local wildlife every day. We are in south Florida if that matters. Thanks!
Moss is fascinating stuff and good for close scrutiny if you want to branch out into other kingdoms.
posted by flabdablet at 8:21 AM on June 10, 2020
posted by flabdablet at 8:21 AM on June 10, 2020
Mealworms! We grew mealworms in the classroom when I was in elementary school and I remember thinking it was really cool.
posted by mekily at 8:36 AM on June 10, 2020
posted by mekily at 8:36 AM on June 10, 2020
You can get kits to hatch and grow Triops
posted by Captain_Science at 8:38 AM on June 10, 2020 [3 favorites]
posted by Captain_Science at 8:38 AM on June 10, 2020 [3 favorites]
Do a small tangent and explore terrariums. So much fun using found objects and planning the "world" you create inside. At least a library visit to see if a picture book inspires.
posted by Freedomboy at 8:38 AM on June 10, 2020
posted by Freedomboy at 8:38 AM on June 10, 2020
Get yourself a USB microscope and a jar of pond water. You'll find more things than you can shake a stick at in there, especially in South FL. We did the send-in-a-coupon-for-ants ant farms. They were nifty, but obviously don't last particularly long without a queen. Mantises would also be interesting if you can locate the egg sack in the fall or winter, then guard it until the spring.
Crickets breed well in captivity, too - lots of people keep colonies as food supplies for other things. Same with brine shrimp.
Birdfeeders, nesting boxes or (if you have a good spot for one) a bat house?
You might also look at /r/Jarrariums/.
posted by jquinby at 8:39 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
Crickets breed well in captivity, too - lots of people keep colonies as food supplies for other things. Same with brine shrimp.
Birdfeeders, nesting boxes or (if you have a good spot for one) a bat house?
You might also look at /r/Jarrariums/.
posted by jquinby at 8:39 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
Stick insects are easy to keep if you have ready access to their food plants (brambles or eucalyptus).
posted by snarfois at 8:39 AM on June 10, 2020
posted by snarfois at 8:39 AM on June 10, 2020
Praying mantis egg cases are easy to come by (they are used for pest control). You could hatch one, then release most of the babies. Praying mantises are extremely cool looking. They have those triangular heads that swivel to look at you, and they can grow rather large.
Pluses: they look at you! They are beautiful!
Minuses: you have to feed them crickets or fruitflies (or... research it) and that can get a little gorey.
Pluses maybe: depending on your tolerance/ability to appreciate the circle of life, you might find the gorey part fascinating.
posted by amtho at 8:50 AM on June 10, 2020 [4 favorites]
Pluses: they look at you! They are beautiful!
Minuses: you have to feed them crickets or fruitflies (or... research it) and that can get a little gorey.
Pluses maybe: depending on your tolerance/ability to appreciate the circle of life, you might find the gorey part fascinating.
posted by amtho at 8:50 AM on June 10, 2020 [4 favorites]
Ant farm or butterfly farm are both classics, although I admit I haven't researched the ethics as an adult.
Also, you mentioned growing seeds, but perhaps you may also have fun with propagating plants in water, which is really satisfying to watch since you can see the roots go.
posted by mosst at 9:02 AM on June 10, 2020
Also, you mentioned growing seeds, but perhaps you may also have fun with propagating plants in water, which is really satisfying to watch since you can see the roots go.
posted by mosst at 9:02 AM on June 10, 2020
Keeping isopods (pill bugs) is a thing, typically as part of a "bioactive vivarium" for another species (reptiles or whatever). But you don't have to have another species.
Madagascar hissing cockroaches also seem to freely reproduce in captivity.
Have you seen the Ants Canada youtube channel? Ant farms can be beautiful!
posted by stowaway at 9:13 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
Madagascar hissing cockroaches also seem to freely reproduce in captivity.
Have you seen the Ants Canada youtube channel? Ant farms can be beautiful!
posted by stowaway at 9:13 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
You can mail order lots of pretty and interesting species of isopods, or collect the regular native from your yard and breed them. It seems they will breed and rear young without too much hassle, though I haven't done it myself yet.
Crickets are easy to breed, mostly people do it to feed their other critters (e.g. lizards), but they can also be just for fun, (or food for you!).
Vermiculture grows critters and puts them to work for you, info e.g. here.
Triops mentioned above are probably cooler, but there's also the traditional Sea Monkeys.
People breed beetles especially for beetle wrestling. That's a bit advanced but if you catch two male stag beetles on the same night, you can have some (safe, harmless) fun by having them square off on a small table or stump.
I'm not sure what kind of slime mold you had, but if you get an acellular Physarum , you can make it grow maps and patterns.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:15 AM on June 10, 2020 [4 favorites]
Crickets are easy to breed, mostly people do it to feed their other critters (e.g. lizards), but they can also be just for fun, (or food for you!).
Vermiculture grows critters and puts them to work for you, info e.g. here.
Triops mentioned above are probably cooler, but there's also the traditional Sea Monkeys.
People breed beetles especially for beetle wrestling. That's a bit advanced but if you catch two male stag beetles on the same night, you can have some (safe, harmless) fun by having them square off on a small table or stump.
I'm not sure what kind of slime mold you had, but if you get an acellular Physarum , you can make it grow maps and patterns.
posted by SaltySalticid at 9:15 AM on June 10, 2020 [4 favorites]
I should have put this in my above comment - you don't necessarily have to buy exotic isopods to do it as a hobby. My kid collected pill bugs from our yard and kept them in a container for several months, feeding them, kept it moist, etc, and they reproduced and we had little roly-polys to enjoy before she released them back into the yard. She used one of those smallish acrylic containers with a handle, like what you would use to bring home a frog from a pet store.
posted by stowaway at 9:18 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by stowaway at 9:18 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
Silkworms.
posted by trig at 9:38 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by trig at 9:38 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
Some things we've found that were cool to keep and observe:
ground beetles - We see a lot of large greenish ones in our yard that look similar to the picture at the top of that Wikipedia page. They're predators, so you can give them smaller insects and watch them go after them.
We found what turned out to be salamander egg masses in a place where a little pool had dried up. We put some in buckets of water and eventually salamander larvae hatched out. We kept some in a bowl and ended up with two that turned into little spotted salamanders. One of them gradually grew into a big spotted salamander that lived for years in a terrarium and would come out from under its bark shelter to be fed worms.
We found a wolf spider carrying an egg sac and kept it until the eggs hatched and we got to see the tiny baby spiders riding around on their mom.
Toads are fun to keep for a while and feed things to.
You might try delving deeper into the world of caterpillars. My daughter really got into collecting caterpillars and we both learned a lot from that. There are some very cool caterpillars out there and it's fun to hunt for them. (Find out which ones in your area are dangerous to touch, but most of them are fine and you can generally collect and keep them without touching them.) You can try beating trees to knock them loose or going out with a flashlight and turning leaves over at night. If you find an interesting one you can keep it until it pupates and then watch to see what emerges. (Notice what plant you find it on so you know what leaves to collect to feed it as it grows.) Did you know there are wingless moths? My daughter was very excited when we found tussock moth caterpillars and learned that the females adults are wingless. We grew some to adulthood and got to see wingless females for ourselves.
You can also try painting trees with sugar bait to attract moths.
posted by Redstart at 9:48 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
ground beetles - We see a lot of large greenish ones in our yard that look similar to the picture at the top of that Wikipedia page. They're predators, so you can give them smaller insects and watch them go after them.
We found what turned out to be salamander egg masses in a place where a little pool had dried up. We put some in buckets of water and eventually salamander larvae hatched out. We kept some in a bowl and ended up with two that turned into little spotted salamanders. One of them gradually grew into a big spotted salamander that lived for years in a terrarium and would come out from under its bark shelter to be fed worms.
We found a wolf spider carrying an egg sac and kept it until the eggs hatched and we got to see the tiny baby spiders riding around on their mom.
Toads are fun to keep for a while and feed things to.
You might try delving deeper into the world of caterpillars. My daughter really got into collecting caterpillars and we both learned a lot from that. There are some very cool caterpillars out there and it's fun to hunt for them. (Find out which ones in your area are dangerous to touch, but most of them are fine and you can generally collect and keep them without touching them.) You can try beating trees to knock them loose or going out with a flashlight and turning leaves over at night. If you find an interesting one you can keep it until it pupates and then watch to see what emerges. (Notice what plant you find it on so you know what leaves to collect to feed it as it grows.) Did you know there are wingless moths? My daughter was very excited when we found tussock moth caterpillars and learned that the females adults are wingless. We grew some to adulthood and got to see wingless females for ourselves.
You can also try painting trees with sugar bait to attract moths.
posted by Redstart at 9:48 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
You've grown caterpillars, but have you done monarch butterflies specifically? It's caterpillar season, if you've got access to milkweed. (I am doing them for the first time, right now.)
posted by Lyn Never at 10:00 AM on June 10, 2020
posted by Lyn Never at 10:00 AM on June 10, 2020
This question reminded me of this experiment, where someone dug out a chunk of earth from their lawn, put it in a clear plastic bag, and watched to see what emerged over time. (A lot of things emerged.)
posted by trig at 10:03 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
posted by trig at 10:03 AM on June 10, 2020 [2 favorites]
As somebody who used to be a young girl super into bugs who grew up into an adult into bugs, getting a Kritter Keeper or two like this for her (available at PetCo) and letting her catch bugs of her own is so rewarding.
People are pointing out ant farms and that's a fun temporary thing but they're right that without a queen the ants will just die off. You also don't get to watch a lot of interesting ant behaviors. But you CAN keep ants with queens if you are interested! I'd suggest watching the AntsCanada videos mentioned above to get a good idea of what that entails--that guy also runs a store that sells formicarium supplies. Unlike ant farms, it's a longer term commitment, but they're not pets that need intensive care either.
It can be tricky to find queens in the wild and it's dependent on the time of year, but last year the government deregulated shipping ant queens of one particular species, and there's a company in North Carolina that will sell you one, homegrown raised. (Yeah, it's not super cheap--it's pretty much a hand harvested and raised exotic pet.)
(Me, I managed to catch a carpenter ant queen a couple years back and have a colony of my own!)
posted by foxfirefey at 10:04 AM on June 10, 2020 [3 favorites]
People are pointing out ant farms and that's a fun temporary thing but they're right that without a queen the ants will just die off. You also don't get to watch a lot of interesting ant behaviors. But you CAN keep ants with queens if you are interested! I'd suggest watching the AntsCanada videos mentioned above to get a good idea of what that entails--that guy also runs a store that sells formicarium supplies. Unlike ant farms, it's a longer term commitment, but they're not pets that need intensive care either.
It can be tricky to find queens in the wild and it's dependent on the time of year, but last year the government deregulated shipping ant queens of one particular species, and there's a company in North Carolina that will sell you one, homegrown raised. (Yeah, it's not super cheap--it's pretty much a hand harvested and raised exotic pet.)
(Me, I managed to catch a carpenter ant queen a couple years back and have a colony of my own!)
posted by foxfirefey at 10:04 AM on June 10, 2020 [3 favorites]
Oh one more resource - take a look at Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study, too. Detailed nature study is an integral part of the particular flavor of homeschooling we use and this book has been on our shelf for a long time.
posted by jquinby at 10:24 AM on June 10, 2020
posted by jquinby at 10:24 AM on June 10, 2020
I grew carrots for the first time last summer and was blessed with black swallowtail butterflys eating the carrot tops then laying their eggs on the carrot tops/stalks. So I got to see the eggs grow daily, then the caterpillars then the chrysalis formed. They also eat dill, parsley and fennel. They didn’t destroy the carrots either, we still harvested plenty of carrots but I wouldn’t have minded, I was excited every day observing their lives. It looks like Florida has swallowtails so if you have access to an outdoor spot it could be fun to grow some carrots and watch them daily once the frilly tops grow.
posted by RichardHenryYarbo at 12:36 PM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
posted by RichardHenryYarbo at 12:36 PM on June 10, 2020 [1 favorite]
Hi, I am an entomologist who specializes in True Bugs, and I've done a lot of troubleshooting maintaining live colonies.
Everyone here has made so many great suggestions! I think you've got a ton of awesome ideas to follow up on. Instead of offering more ideas, I'd just like to offer my availability to help troubleshoot the husbandry. You can contact me on twitter @crfisher3 or use the contact form on my website at https://www.cerafisher.space/.
The reason I'm offering this is that sometimes living colonies start to fail for reasons that aren't immediately clear and it can be disheartening and frustrating when that happens. However, it's also the best opportunity you have to really start to understand the biology of the critters.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 1:35 PM on June 10, 2020 [6 favorites]
Everyone here has made so many great suggestions! I think you've got a ton of awesome ideas to follow up on. Instead of offering more ideas, I'd just like to offer my availability to help troubleshoot the husbandry. You can contact me on twitter @crfisher3 or use the contact form on my website at https://www.cerafisher.space/.
The reason I'm offering this is that sometimes living colonies start to fail for reasons that aren't immediately clear and it can be disheartening and frustrating when that happens. However, it's also the best opportunity you have to really start to understand the biology of the critters.
posted by Made of Star Stuff at 1:35 PM on June 10, 2020 [6 favorites]
Please let me just insinuate a word of caution if you will.
I don't want to throw cold water on any of these lovely suggestions. I was a little girl who just loved catching and keeping insects. The wonderful thing my parents did was to instill in me the idea that all lives deserve respect, so if I was not able to figure out how to keep an insect humanely, if it was not feeding, if it was always seeking an escape from its new home, I had to let them go. Insect populations are crashing all over the world. Things like large hurcules beetles and some other types of insects particularly attractive to kids, have been disappearing from places they used to thrive. Even the loss of a single individual in some cases, can be devestating. Regardless, it's important to learn to observe the animal in nature before putting it in captivity. It sounds to me like the OP has been going about everything in a very conscientious way, and I thank them for that. My note of caution is for others who may come later to this discussion.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 2:23 PM on June 10, 2020 [8 favorites]
I don't want to throw cold water on any of these lovely suggestions. I was a little girl who just loved catching and keeping insects. The wonderful thing my parents did was to instill in me the idea that all lives deserve respect, so if I was not able to figure out how to keep an insect humanely, if it was not feeding, if it was always seeking an escape from its new home, I had to let them go. Insect populations are crashing all over the world. Things like large hurcules beetles and some other types of insects particularly attractive to kids, have been disappearing from places they used to thrive. Even the loss of a single individual in some cases, can be devestating. Regardless, it's important to learn to observe the animal in nature before putting it in captivity. It sounds to me like the OP has been going about everything in a very conscientious way, and I thank them for that. My note of caution is for others who may come later to this discussion.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 2:23 PM on June 10, 2020 [8 favorites]
Just wanted to plug @entobarbie on Twitter, as I think she's pretty awesome and might interest your daughter 😊
posted by The otter lady at 3:18 PM on June 10, 2020
posted by The otter lady at 3:18 PM on June 10, 2020
Mushrooms! I grew oyster mushrooms from a kit several years ago. It was really fun to watch them grow and they were delicious when the time came to eat them.
posted by kitty teeth at 3:21 PM on June 10, 2020
posted by kitty teeth at 3:21 PM on June 10, 2020
Keeping isopods (pill bugs) is a thing, typically as part of a "bioactive vivarium" for another species (reptiles or whatever). But you don't have to have another species.
I had a terrarium when I was a kid that I threw a few pillbugs / sowbugs into, the terrestrial kind, and they very quickly multiplied.
posted by mmoncur at 7:22 PM on June 10, 2020
I had a terrarium when I was a kid that I threw a few pillbugs / sowbugs into, the terrestrial kind, and they very quickly multiplied.
posted by mmoncur at 7:22 PM on June 10, 2020
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