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Jonathan's Jungle
News from January and February 2011
21st
February 2011
Yesterday was a VERY
exciting day for me indeed because
Kate my tailless whip
scorpion had babies for the first time ever!!
As you can see from these
pictures there are LOTS of them too, it is very
difficult to tell exactly how many there are but I
am delighted with whatever number there proves to
be! Like true scorpions, tailless whip
scorpions carry their babies on their abdomen during
the early days of their lives.
What you cannot clearly see
here is that there are actually babies on the
underside of Kate's abdomen too, so the number is
even greater than it would first appear to be!
Aren't they absolutely
adorable?? Please check back to this page in
the coming weeks for updates about how these
fabulous new additions are doing!
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10th
February 2011
My beautiful
Antilles pink
toe tarantula has moulted AGAIN this week!!
Smartie is now looking more stunning than ever and
this moult has certainly seen the most significant
increase in size since I bought him/her in October
2010!
What is especially exciting
about Smartie's appearance following this moult is
that I am starting to see some of the
pinkish/purplish colouration appear on the leg
hairs, something I have been looking forward to very
much due to the amazing colour change which I know
will occur as s/he continues to grow! The
pictures below show how much Smartie has grown
between October 2nd 2010 when I bought him/her
(left) and today's date (right), using my wrist
watch as a guide!!
 
I now have quite a
collection of Smartie's exuviae (moulted
exoskeletons) as s/he has moulted five times in just
over four months. It really is amazing to see
how much s/he has grown in such a short time with
this most recent change of size being the most
amazing yet!
The reason for there only
being four exuviae in the picture above is that
sadly the very smallest exuvia has been damaged too
badly and had to be discarded, they are
exceptionally brittle and easily broken/crushed - as
seen by the missing legs from the smaller ones here.
As they get larger each exuvia is a little tougher
so the larger ones are less likely to break, this
newest one being a beautiful example as you can see
here.
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This
week I have taken some new photographs of Mei-Ling,
my stunning
mandarin rat snake, as she is getting larger all
the time and it would appear that her colouration is
improving with age too!! I would never have
believed that possible as I already think she is the
world's most amazingly beautiful snake!!
Mei-Ling
is now also attending the occasional visit with me
and she is extremely popular with everybody
she meets, not just because of her beauty but
because of the fact that she is one of the calmest
snakes people have ever met and an absolute joy to
be around and to handle!
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I have
also taken a few updated photographs of some of my
collection of crested
geckos this week, including these three
absolutely beautiful dalmatian geckos which hatched
in my collection during the late summer of 2010 and
which I have decided to keep for myself - I'm sure
you can see why based on their beautiful colours and
patterns!!!
For more
information about this fantastic species please
click on the blue text above or simply click
here.
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26th
January 2011
Sorry for the lack of
updates, to say the start of 2011 has been hectic
would be a huge understatement! I've never had
a busier January in terms of school visits, which is
fantastic, and I've also already attended lots of
parties and other events this year.
One of these was a
huge three-day conference & exhibition hosted by the
Association for Science Education at the University
of Reading, where I met lots of lovely teachers and
other education professionals and had the chance to
share some of my wonderful animals with them!
Below are pictures of me demonstrating how
Margaret the giant
Asian praying mantis 'dances' when encouraged to
do so (right), and one of the many many people I met
enjoying his on-the-shoulder encounter with a
Peruvian
horsehead grasshopper!!
 
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In terms of animal news I
haven't made any new additions to the collection
(yet) this year but I do have a few new pictures to
share with you. First up is the gorgeous
Smartie, my
Antilles pink toe tarantula, who has moulted
again!
As you can see s/he appears
to get even prettier as time goes by! I can't
wait to see how her colour changes this year as she
will begin to change to her adult colouration in the
coming months which will involve pinks, purples and
reds appearing!! Watch this space...
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A very firm
favourite with people he meets (of all ages) is
Splodge, one of my adult male breeder
crested geckos,
and this week he has shed his skin. This isn't
a strange occurrence at all, in fact when you have
as many geckos as I do here now (about 30) it is
something that happens very often, but this time I
managed to get some nice photographs which show the
appearance of geckos just before and during the
shedding process.
As you can see from this
picture, Splodge does not look his usual vibrant
self at all! This is because the old outer
skin has separated from the new skin and is ready to
come off - it actually looks a bit like he is
wearing a thin plastic bag over his entire body!!
If you look on his head you will see that there are
a couple of small tears in the old skin, showing
that it is fully loose and ready to be shed (and in
the case of these geckos, eaten)! The pictures
below show how the skin looks when it starts to be
torn (usually bitten), you can see clearly how the
new skin underneath is much more brightly coloured
than the old skin which is being removed during the
shedding process!
Here is Splodge's skin
after he had finished the process, taken at night
when his colouration is a lot brighter than during
the day when the photos above were taken!
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4th
January 2011
A very Happy New Year to
you all! I am absolutely delighted to say that
I ended 2010 with possibly my most exciting new
animal acquisitions of the entire year which,
considering some of my other fabulous new additions
to my collection in 2010, is really saying
something! I bought three individuals of
a gecko species known both as the mossy New
Caledonian gecko and the mossy prehensile-tailed
gecko, but which are best known by their scientific
name of Rhacodactylus chahoua, with most
breeders simply referring to them as chahoua
for short!
These represent my third
New Caledonian gecko species after my hugely popular
crested geckos
and gargoyle geckos.
At present these three babies are very small as you
can see above and below (only weighing in at 2-3g
currently), but they are a species I have long
admired and hoped to add to my collection due to
their truly incredible colouration and
patterning as adults.
Despite different shades of
greys and browns
being their main colours as juveniles, as you can
see in the three pictures above, as adults they can
be an absolutely stunning mixture of greens and
reds. This is ably demonstrated by the
beautiful adult below named Sage, who is one of the
parents of the middle gecko above! My
sincerest thanks to Debbie & Leon of The Gex Files
for allowing me to use their fantastic image of the
lovely Sage on my website!
If any of my three
individuals turn out to be half as beautiful as Sage
I will be a very happy man indeed! It will be
fascinating to see how the colouration of each
individual changes and develops, watch this space
for development news in the coming months.
Despite not being so colourful as the adults, the
camouflage of juvenile chahoua is quite astonishing.
These photographs of my juveniles taken on a piece
of cork bark show this very well:
In the picture above there
are actually two geckos, can you see the second one?
There is just a single gecko in the picture below
but it brilliantly shows how well camouflaged they
can be against tree bark in their primary forest
habitat, in order to prevent being spotted by their
many natural predators:
As these individuals grow I
will be sure to update this page with details of how
their colour and pattern develop, and once they are
large enough to be incorporated into my visits they
will of course get their own page! I am
delighted with all three of them and for now I will
leave you with my favourite photograph of the three
of them together. Another of their fantastic
features is that they are very calm individuals and
happy to live communally!
Please feel free to check
this page regularly during 2011 for any significant
news of these and all of the other animals
within my collection!
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