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Jonathan's Jungle
News from
March
and April 2011
11th
April 2011
My first baby crested
gecko of 2011 has hatched in the last couple of
days! No matter how many times you see baby
reptiles hatching it NEVER gets tiresome! This
one is a beauty as you can see here!
They are
really quite tiny as newly-hatched babies as you can
see from the two pictures directly above and below!
The bits of material stuck onto the baby gecko's
head and back are vermiculite, the material in which
my reptile eggs are always incubated.
Vermiculite is an excellent material for holding
moisture making it perfect for incubating reptile
eggs, which require water to pass through the
leathery shell wall as the babies inside develop.
Hopefully this little one will be the first of many
to hatch during 2011, watch this space for more baby
news in the coming weeks and months!
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30th
March 2011
Some of my baby
tailless whip
scorpions have moulted again this week and they
are looking fabulous! This is how some of them
are looking now:
The next
two pictures are of one of the recently-moulted
individuals next to its siblings which have not yet moulted,
showing the impressive size difference which the
moulting process brings about! In both cases
the newly-moulted individual is on the right hand
side of the picture:
I will continue to update
this page as and when there are more changes to
report with the babies, as well as any other
significant news from within my animal collection!
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22nd
March 2011 Proud
new father Bob the
tailless whip scorpion has moulted! This
is the first time Bob has moulted since I bought him
& Kate in May 2010 and it was a lovely surprise to
discover! This is the scene which greeted me
on checking their enclosure late on Sunday night:
What you
are looking at in the above picture is Bob's empty
exoskeleton (exuvia) hanging from the mesh
lid of his & Kate's enclosure, with Bob himself
being the very pale white shape just behind and to
the left of the exuvia! After moulting a whip
scorpion's brand new exoskeleton is very soft &
extremely pale in colour and they hang upside down
for a time to allow it to begin the process of
drying out. Here is Bob VERY soon after moulting on
Sunday night, looking quite amazing as you can see!!
Yesterday morning, just
eight hours after the above picture was taken, Bob's
colouration had already changed dramatically as you
can see below!
I'm sure
you'll agree with me that he looked pretty amazing
yesterday with his bizarre mixture of greens and
blues!!! This morning, just 36 hours on
from when I found him moulted, his colouration is
pretty much back to normal as you can see here:
Still
beautiful I'm sure you'll agree, just not quite as
dramatic or striking as the colours during the time
when his new body was drying out! The exuvia
itself is amazing as it looks so alive despite being
just an empty 'shell'! Here it is with the
pedipalps (pincers) fully open:
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Emilia
my beautiful Mexican red leg
tarantula has also moulted in the last week, I
have been waiting for this to happen for some time
and am glad that she has moulted successfully!
This is the scene which greeted me one morning last
week:
A few days later when she
had recovered from the moulting process she looked
like this, quite gorgeous I'm sure you'll agree!!
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As well
as Bob and Emilia's moults I also took some new
photographs of one of my baby
tailless whip
scorpions on Sunday, exactly one calendar month
on from when they first hatched! You can see
below that they now look quite a bit different than
they did back on 2nd March when they first moulted
and even more so than when they were first born (as
per the news story dated 20th February 2011)!
 
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2nd
March
2011
All of my baby
tailless whip
scorpions have now moulted for the first time
and climbed off of mum Kate's back! I counted
them as I transferred them to a more suitable
enclosure and astonishingly there turned out to be
57 (fifty-seven) which was something of a shock to
say the very least!! They
have changed so much after moulting for the first
time, compare the pictures below to those taken when
they were first born (dated 21st February)!
Their patterns and
colouration are really beautiful now as you can see
from these pictures.
This next picture shows
very clearly just how amazingly long their front
'feeling' legs are!
Here are just a few of the
57 exploring the pieces of bark in their new home:
When I discovered that they
had left Kate's back I also found a huge pile of
moulted exoskeletons (exuviae) on the floor
of their enclosure - here are just a few of them,
looking more like something out of a science fiction
film!!
I am very much looking
forward to seeing how these babies grow and change
in the coming months, be sure to check back here
sometime in the future to see how they are doing!
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During the last few days I
have taken some lovely new pictures of some of my
many geckos. First up is Kluivert, one of my
beautiful gargoyle
geckos,
who as you can see is looking absolutely
stunning these days!!
When I first bought
Kluivert as a tiny baby in late September 2010 s/he
had just a few small patches of pale orange
colouration, but now these patches have spread and
become far brighter too. Kluivert is still
nowhere near fully grown and the colour should
continue to intensify as s/he grows, so I am really
excited about how s/he may look in the future!
I have also taken some
updated pictures of my other gargoyle geckos - these
are named Gollum, Lady Gargoyle and Godzooky
respectively in these three pictures below!
Despite not having the
intense orange colouration of Kluivert I think each
of these geckos is absolutely beautiful in their own
way! For more information about these
wonderful animals please click
here.
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I have also taken some new
pictures and created a new webpage for my wonderful
mossy New Caledonian
prehensile-tailed geckos! This is quite a
mouthful as names go I'm sure you'll agree, so many
people (myself included) refer to these geckos
simply as 'chahoua', due to their scientific
name being Rhacodactylus chahoua. This is a
much quicker way to refer to them and the way I will
be doing so here on my website!!!
For much more information
about these amazing geckos (and lots more
pictures) please click on the blue highlighted text
above these pictures or just click
here!
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