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Jonathan's Jungle
News from
July
and August 2011
27th August 2011 I
have arrived home from a lovely family holiday
(during which time my dad has looked after all of my
animals brilliantly!) to find some new babies!
These are newly hatched
Peruvian
horsehead grasshoppers, one of my favourite
insect species of all!
As you
can see from these pictures they are very small and
VERY cute! They are incredibly fast growing
though, for pictures of the adults and more
information about this amazing grasshopper species
please click
here.
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I also
came home from my holiday to find that many of my
baby tailless whip
scorpions had moulted AGAIN! I can hardly
call them babies now though as they are getting so
big! This is how large they are now, at just
six months old:
If you
check back over the months since these hatched on
February 20th, or just take a look at their page
here, you will
see that their growth rate is pretty amazing!!
Here are three of the moulted exoskeletons (exuviae)
looking fantastic:
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9th
August 2011
Unfortunately due to
technical issues the News update written on July
23rd failed to publish at the time it was written,
therefore that update is also 'new' here as of today
so please feel free to check it out!
I have acquired some more
fantastic new animals since my last update - the
first of which is a beautiful new juvenile 'Firefly'
royal python named Ray!
Sadly Ray was born with a
neurological condition which causes his head and
neck to 'wobble' as he moves around, such that it
sometimes looks as though he has little to no
control over his movements which can be quite
erratic. Ray was donated to me by a very kind
breeder friend of mine and in every other way he is
perfectly healthy as well as being absolutely
beautiful and very friendly indeed!
I intend to introduce Ray
to my Jungle Roadshow visits very gradually and to
use him to show people that snakes with disabilities
deserve our respect and appreciation too!
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As well as Ray I have also
recently acquired two new adult female
leopard geckos
for my collection and these are now living with my
lovely adult male Blotch, who is ever popular with
everybody he meets! These two females
are individuals of two different colour forms (or
morphs) and they look very different to each other
as you can see below:
I
haven't yet thought of good names for these two
geckos and would welcome suggestions from anyone who
can think of suitable names based on their
appearances!
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As well as these new
reptiles I have also acquired some amazing new
insects - the individuals below are of a species of
grasshopper commonly known as the
Malay
ghost grasshopper and as you can see they are
absolutely beautiful!
For more information and
pictures about these amazing insects please click on
the blue highlighted text above!
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My final new animal of
recent weeks is currently only a very small baby but
will grow considerably larger in the months and
years to come! This tiny spider is a baby
Brazilian black tarantula, a species I have always
admired and which as an adult has a beautiful jet
black velvety body and a leg span of up to 6 inches!
 
Watch this space to see
how this cute little spider grows and develops in
the coming months....
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As well
as all of these new animals I am very excited about
the prospect of the pitter-patter of more baby
tailless whip
scorpions later this year as Kate is carrying
eggs again! Having already had 57 babies in
February I was surprised to find her carrying eggs
again so soon, here they are in the special
protective sac on the underside of her abdomen,
where they will be carried until they hatch in a few
months time! Watch this space...  
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23rd
July 2011
I have this week purchased a couple of fantastic new
animals for my collection! First up is a truly
amazing Hercules
beetle, a species I have always admired (for
obvious reasons I am sure) but have never yet kept!
Here he is, a truly magnificent specimen despite not
being especially large for this particular species!
I have
decided to name him Hercules (very unimaginative I
know)! He is absolutely fantastic and I will
very much look forward to introducing him to my
Jungle Roadshow in the coming weeks, in the meantime
for more photographs & information about him please
click here.
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The
second new animal is a female mossy
prehensile-tailed gecko or
chahoua. This female will one day be
paired with my male but for the moment neither is
large or old enough to breed and I don't ever put
geckos together until they are ready. She is
very beautiful and like almost all of my geckos
(with a couple of exceptions bred in Holland) she
was bred here in the UK:
There will be more new
animals added to the collection in the coming weeks
so watch this space!!
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6th July
2011 This
week my baby tailless
whip scorpions have been moulting again!!
Without doubt these are some of my favourite baby
animals I have ever bred in my nearly 30 years of
keeping invertebrates and reptiles, they are
fantastic creatures and never cease to amaze me!
Immediately after moulting
their new exoskeletons are incredibly soft and very
pale in colouration as you can see in the pictures
above, this becomes even more obvious when you see a
newly moulted individual sitting next to one of
normal colouration as below!
As
always the newly-moulted exoskeleton (or exuvia) of
each individual animal is a truly remarkable thing,
looking so much like the real animal itself and in
one complete piece which in itself is absolutely
astonishing - how they get out of their old body
whilst leaving it in one piece is still a mystery to
me, despite having actually seen it happen on many
occasions!
The
moulting process of whip scorpions and many of my
other invertebrates is truly fascinating and I
really don't think I'll ever get tired of seeing it
occurring, which is a good thing as it happens a lot
in a large animal collection such as mine!
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Speaking of moulting I have
this week also had a couple of my female
jungle nymphs
moult successfully for the final time to become
adults. This is especially pleasing as these are
individuals which I have bred myself and I have
therefore seen them develop from being tiny nymphs
(babies) to their fully grown size! Here is
one of them, beautiful isn't she?
Of all
the many species of phasmids (stick and leaf
insects) which I have kept in my time I have to say
that I still admire the jungle nymphs most of all,
mainly for the amazing beauty and large size of the
adult females.
I handle
mine regularly because despite these animals being
capable of causing a painful injury, which they do
by lashing their powerful spiny rear legs together
in a kicking action if threatened or disturbed, I
find that as long as they are handled gently and
with care they are very reluctant to do so!
They make truly amazing display animals and both
children & adults alike find them absolutely
fascinating, just as I do!
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