Jonathan's Jungle News from January - March 2008

12th March 2008  Huge apologies to all my regular visitors to the website for the lack of updates since the start of 2008, life has been rather hectic what with a new baby in our lives (see news story dated 30th December 2007 for more information)!  A lot has happened already this year in terms of new baby animals of various kinds and big changes to existing animals, please watch this space for further updates to follow this one!

In early January I had a large number of baby leaf insects hatch, these being the first ones I have ever hatched from the first ever eggs produced in my collection! 

As you can see, on hatching the babies are red in colour and they do not take on their usual green colouration until they moult for the first time which is usually at least a week or more after hatching.  The animals pictured below have already gone through their first moult but as you can see they are still tiny!  Once they are green they remain that colour for the rest of their lives, getting bigger and bigger with each moult until they reach maturity.

As well as leaf insects I have also successfully hatched my first ever jungle nymphs in recent weeks, which I am really pleased about.  Jungle nymph ova (eggs), pictured below, can take between a year and eighteen months to hatch and the ova which have just hatched certainly took well over 12 months of incubation, which is a long time to wait as I'm sure you'll agree!

The nymphs (babies) are quite large compared to other baby stick insects as the eggs are among the largest stick insect eggs in the world, and they are also very cute and a nice pinkish colour to start off with as you can see below.

Oddly enough I had bought five baby jungle nymphs back in September 2007, as I was getting a little impatient at my own ova not hatching, and these are now starting to look more like they will as adults.  I was lucky enough to be able to photograph one of the females just after she had moulted in January.  All stick insects moult upside down, hanging from a branch, leaf or other suitable surface, and when they have emerged from their old exoskeleton they hang upright for a while to allow their new body to dry out as this one is doing in the picture below.

You can see in the picture that some of the legs of the old exoskeleton are still in position hanging from the leaf.  After a while there is often no evidence of the old exoskeleton at all as most stick insects eat them to recover some of the goodness lost when they lose their old one!

Another of the females which I bought in September has also recently moulted and this one demonstrates very well the amazing colour change which can occur when stick insects like jungle nymphs moult as they approach maturity.  These pictures are of the same female and were taken just shortly before and directly after she moulted to the first 'green' stage of the jungle nymph's life cycle!

It is clear that the colour change, and the size increase, is quite amazing!  Inside the old exoskeleton of a stick insect a whole new one is forming.  It is always larger than the old one, and as these pictures demonstrate it can also often be a much different colour as well.  The jungle nymph in the picture above is still not adult, and if you compare this picture to the ones of the female on the main jungle nymph page you will see that the adult female on that page has much larger wings, which will develop inside the tiny wing buds which are just visible in the picture above and which will expand and be more visible once she moults for a final two times.