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Jonathan's Jungle
News from
August
and September 2008
29th
September 2008
Noah, my newest
Brazilian
rainbow boa, shed his skin today! See the
news item dated 25th September below for the
pictures of his skin before shedding, when he was
looking really drab and colourless, and compare them
to how gorgeous he looks now! As described in
more detail on the rainbow boas page these beautiful
snakes have amazing iridescent scales which seem to
shine with all the colours of the rainbow, hence
their name!
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25th September 2008 Today was an
exciting day as I went to collect another baby
Brazilian
rainbow boa from a friend who had 36 babies born
on September 18th, just one week ago! Like all
boas, rainbow boas give birth to live young rather
than laying eggs. This one is currently
preparing to shed his skin for the first time, which
usually occurs between one and two weeks after
birth, and for this reason his skin colour looks
very cloudy and drab as you can see below!
The cloudiness of the eyes
and skin is caused by a build-up of fluid between
the old outer skin and the new inner skin.
This fluid helps the snake to shed its skin when the
time is right, by allowing it to slide off more
easily. Once he has shed his skin it will be
really colourful and bright, check back soon to see
when it has happened!
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21st
September 2008
It seems to be the time for
new babies in my invertebrate collection at present
what with the cockroaches, scorpions and stick
insects reported below, and now I can add
African giant black millipedes
to the list too as I have just found a large group
of babies in with Millie and my other millipedes!
They are very small as you can see from this one
pictured here against a 5p coin!
It is really strange timing
as the first ever millipedes I bred were found in
September 2006, nearly two years ago to the day!
Pictured below is one of the new babies alongside
one of those which hatched two years ago, and there
is quite an amazing size difference as you will see!
Whilst it may look huge
compared to the baby, this two-year old millipede is
only about 16cm in length, so not nearly as big as
my 25cm+ adults! Hopefully you can get some
idea of the huge increase in size that occurs
between the start of their life and the time these
animals are fully grown adults a few years later!
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16th
September 2008
In recent weeks I have had
lots of new baby
Madagascan hissing cockroaches born in my
collection. In fact they have been being born
regularly since I started keeping them two years
ago and I have now had more than 1000 babies born, but I
just happen to have had a lot born in recent
weeks and months! These pictures are just of a
VERY small selection of my cockroaches, there are
currently close to 300 in total!
Whilst many of the adults I
meet with my roadshow initially find the cockroaches
a bit creepy, the vast majority of children find
them fascinating and love to handle them as they
feel tickly and funny as they crawl over your hands
and arms! The adults who are brave enough to
also have a go are usually surprised to discover
this too!
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9th
September 2008
A very exciting thing
happened the night before last as one of my three
female Imperial scorpions
had babies! This is the second time I have
successfully bred Imperial scorpions, the first time
being in June 2007 and as reported
here.
Scorpions give birth to live young rather than
laying eggs and they can have quite a lot of babies
at one time, which they then carry around on their
back for a few weeks as you can see below! The
babies start off their lives white in colour but
will gradually become darker and darker as they grow
and moult.
It is difficult to count
exactly how many babies this female has on her back
but if you count just the ones you can see clearly
in the picture above there are definitely more than
20. Female imperial scorpions
demonstrate truly excellent parental care. The
babies will remain on her back for several weeks
now that they are born and during this time she will
provide them with food by crushing up crickets for
them to eat, as well as ensuring the safety of her
babies during this time when their bodies are very
soft and delicate.
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As well as these new babies
I found four more new arrivals this weekend too!
My first ever Haaniella
dehaani ova (eggs) hatched, so I now have four
tiny nymphs of this lovely stick insect species!
The babies are really cute as you can see below:
I have had the adults which
produced these babies since they themselves
were tiny nymphs, and they only took a little over seven
months to go from this size to fully grown!
Two of the females which may have produced the ova
which these ones above hatched from are pictured
below, and you can clearly see the huge size
increase which they go through during their
development!
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1st
September 2008
A lot has happened since my
last update three weeks ago! I have
acquired a number of fantastic new animals, all of
which I am really excited about as each of them
represent firsts for me in terms of my animal
collection despite the fact that I have been keeping
reptiles for well over 20 years.
First up is this absolutely
stunning male
Sudanese spiny
tail lizard which I have named Yoda after one
of my favourite ever film characters, it seems to
suit him! He is the first spiny tailed lizard
I have ever kept despite falling in love with these
animals at a very young age, so I am very excited to
have him in my collection!
As the name suggests these
lizards would originate in Sudan in northern Africa
and they are used to living in very hot and dry
conditions, which is reflected in the way in which
they need to be housed in captivity. As the
name also suggests they have an amazing spiny tail
as you can see in this picture:
For more pictures of Yoda,
and more information about him, please click
here.
I have also acquired some
more fabulous new snakes, all three of which are
species I am keeping for the first time. First
up is a truly exquisite
Brazilian rainbow boa,
another species which I have long admired and I am
sure it will be very clear why from these pictures:
As I am
sure you can see, this is an absolutely spectacular
species which has a 'rainbow' effect iridescence or
shine to its skin. This is only a one-month
old baby and about 25cm long, by the time it is
fully grown in a few years it will be somewhere
between 1.5 and 2.1 metres! For more pictures
(and lots of them!) click
here.
The
other two new snakes are both carpet pythons, a
species which originates from Australia and has many
different colour forms depending on exactly from
where exactly where they are found. The
first is a beautiful
Jungle
carpet python, a species which originates
from the rainforests of a part of north-eastern
Queensland, although like all my animals this one
was bred in captivity in the UK. It is a
5-year old male, about 1.6 metres long and very
beautiful as you can see here:
The
other is a one-year old female
Coastal carpet python,
from the Rockhampton locality of Queensland
from which the original parent animals would have
originated.
As you
can see she has a very different pattern to the
jungle carpet python above and despite only being a
year old she is already quite long at over a metre!
This particular form of carpet python has the
potential to grow to the largest size, with the
largest individuals reaching 4 metres or more,
although in captivity they rarely grow to more than
2.5 - 3 metres.
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10th
August 2008
It has been a very
exciting week for me this week! On Wednesday I
drove to south east London especially to buy a new
snake, and I am now the very proud owner of a
Boa constrictor called Boaz
who is more than 7 feet or 2 metres 20cm long!!
He is
absolutely beautiful and very friendly, having been
used to being handled regularly by both his previous
owners and their young children. He weighs 5
kg and is easily the largest snake I have ever
personally owned, which is why I have such a happy
expression on my face in the picture below!
To see
more pictures and for more information about the
wonderful Boaz please click on the blue link above
or simply click here.
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As well
as Boaz I also bought a lovely new tarantula this
week, this one is called Emilia and she is an adult
female Mexican redleg tarantula.
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I was
also lucky enough to be able to photograph another
new baby leopard gecko emerging from its egg!
This one is the very last of the leopard gecko
babies for 2008 so it was good to see it hatching,
and another beauty it is too!
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