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Jonathan's Jungle
News from April and May 2007
31st May
2007
During the month of May I have had eight new baby
leopard geckos
hatch! The picture below shows one of the eggs
hatching. It is a little bit blurred as I took
it through the lid of the plastic tub in which the
eggs have been incubating, so that I did not disturb
the baby gecko whilst it was hatching.
Each of the eight babies
hatched so far are absolutely beautiful and they are
all doing very well indeed.
I keep my baby leopard
geckos separate from each other to ensure that there
is no competition for food, so that they can all
feed well and have a good chance of growing into
strong and healthy geckos. Maximus is the father of
all of these geckos but they are the babies of three
of my four females.
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17th May
2007 I
found my first Atlas
beetle grubs today! So far I have
discovered five but there may be more buried in the
substrate (the mix of leaf litter, compost and
rotten wood in which they live) that I have not yet
found. As you can see below the grubs are
absolutely tiny compared to the 1p coin they have
been photographed with, and it is hard to believe
that one day they will be huge beetles just like
their mum and dad!!
In this first photograph
you can clearly see the tiny legs of one of the
grubs.......
........and in this one you
can clearly see the powerful dark-coloured
mouthparts which the grubs use to chew through and
eat the rotten wood on which they feed.
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7th May 2007 Another egg sac (or
ootheca to give it its correct name) laid by
Margaret the giant Asian
praying mantis hatched today!! I have
estimated that more than 100 babies (or nymphs)
have emerged from the ootheca, and the number could
even be as many as 125! In the picture below
the ootheca is the large barrel-shaped object
hanging from the branch in the centre of the
picture, with lots of the nymphs hanging on the lid
of the tub above it.
The nymphs are very cute
and have black eyes as you can see in the picture
below:
When they are newly hatched
like this they are so tiny compared to their
mum and it is hard to imagine them growing as big as
her at all, but they will do so during the next six
months or so! When they are this small they
have to eat tiny insects such as very small fruit
flies or baby crickets, and I breed crickets mainly
for this purpose so that I always have the tiniest
crickets available to feed to the mantis nymphs.
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26th
April 2007 My
first ever Goliath stick insect
babies (also correctly known as nymphs) have started to
hatch in the last few days! When they first
hatch they are SO tiny compared to Gloria, their
mum! It has taken approximately 7 months from
when they were laid to when they started hatching.
This may seem like a long time to have had to wait,
but it has definitely been worth it as they are my
first ever babies of this species and I am
delighted!
They hatch out of very
beautiful little eggs (or ova) which look a little
bit like they have been sprinkled with glitter, even
though they definitely haven't! This is just
the way they are.
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