Giant Velvet Mite

Description

The giant velvet mite emerges after hard rains here in the desert and they adorn the landscape here and there like little Christmas ornaments. Jesse thinks they look like fuzzy, giant red blood cells. In any case, they are very unique looking and shockingly hardy!

A bit more info. on these can be found on Bugguide.Net.

We treat these as scavengers in our pet bug tanks. We provide them a mostly sandy substrate and keep it fairly moist. They will burrow down if they feel it is too dry at the surface. We feed them dead insects. In nature they may be predators of termites, and their remains, and perhaps grasshopper eggs. I sort of guess the ones we kept for 8 months were scavenging on dead insects only.

A steal at $5 each.