Food: M. dentricus eats many different foods including, but not limited to: oak, apple, cherry, rose, blackberry, raspberry, and willow.
Life cycle: Females lay a few hundred black and white eggs which will hatch in 5-8 months. Nymphs of this animal are very fragile and often tough to get to start feeding but they are definitely worth the trouble. 5 or more months later and adult males are about stabbing each other and injecting females with large spine-like spermatophores that stick out of the females abdomen.
Difficulties:
There seems to be a very high mortality on hatchlings which is lessened
greatly if fed willow until the first molt and kept with other nymphs that
have already begun eating. One other problem is that males tend to kill
each other eventually but generally long after they have successfully mated
many times.
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