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Jonathan's Jungle
News from
May
and June 2009
28th
June 2009
Despite being by
far my busiest month ever in terms of visits, June
2009 has been a very quiet month in terms of
important animal news! Aside from Ruby's
moult, as detailed below, the only other significant
event has been the arrival of a few new beetle grubs
of various species from a friend of mine who breeds
a wide variety of amazing tropical beetles!
Their sizes range from tiny
to much larger as you can see below!
Watch this space for more
animal news in the coming weeks...
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3rd June
2009
Excellent news as Ruby, my
Mexican red knee tarantula, moulted again at the
beginning of the week. For anyone who is
unfamiliar with the process of moulting, and even
for someone like me who is, it is a truly amazing
sight! Once a tarantula like Ruby has finished
moulting it appears that there are two tarantulas in
the enclosure where there used to be just one, as
you can see below!
The 'real' Ruby is the one
on the left, whereas her now-empty exoskeleton or
exuvium is on the right of the picture.
You can see the 'head' area (the carapace) of
the old exoskeleton lying on the ground next to the
rest of the body. It is this part of the
exoskeleton which 'pops' open to allow the whole of
the tarantula's body to be pulled out of the empty
exoskeleton. It really is remarkable that they
leave the old exoskeleton in one piece at the end of
the process, but they do and here it is below, now
nothing more than an empty case:
In the second picture
directly above I have peeled back the exoskeleton's
carapace or head area to reveal the holes below,
through which the tarantula's legs are pulled during
the moulting process. They are even more clear
on the zoomed-in picture below, with each of the
holes leading inside the empty 'tunnel' where the
tarantula's actual legs used to be! It really
is an astonishing process and it never ceases to
amaze me that they can pull their entire new body
out of the old one without breaking or damaging
either!
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20th May
2009 I
truly don't know where the month since my last
update has gone! It seems especially hard to
believe that a month has passed since I bought my
beautiful rainbow boa, she has settled in well to my
collection and is feeding regularly, having also
shed her skin on Monday night. She is now
ready to be included in the occasional roadshow so
some lucky children will meet her soon! I have
been busy in schools every day this term as well as
completing many birthday parties and visits to
Brownies, Scouts etc. and have had a great five
weeks, thanks to all those children and staff who
have made the many visits I have completed so
enjoyable!
I haven't made any new
animal purchases during this time (although there
are others planned so watch this space) but I have
had some new babies hatch. A small number (so
far) of giant spiny
stick insect nymphs have hatched), these being
extremely cute as small nymphs as you can see below:
Whilst it may be quite hard
to believe, the nymph above has only just hatched
out of the egg to the left of the picture! The
nymph's body is quite squashed up inside the egg
prior to hatching and when they emerge it is really
hard to imagine how they manage to get out at
all! The picture below gives you some
idea of the scale of these small nymphs.
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