|
Jonathan's Jungle
News from
May
and June 2011
16th
June 2011
In the two weeks since my last update I am delighted
to report that my female
giant Florida katydid Katy has laid her first
eggs (ova) since I bought her! She attached
more than 125 ova to the side of her mesh enclosure
and they truly are amazing:
When you
look at them up really close you can see that they
are exquisitely beautiful, with each individual egg
or ovum looking more like a shield than an egg!
I am
hopeful that these will hatch in a few weeks, watch
this space for more news!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have
this week taken some beautiful new photographs of
Polly, one of my many
crested geckos. Polly is a beautiful
individual as you can see here, with a particularly
striking pattern and absolutely LOADS of spotting,
making her classed as a 'super dalmatian' crested
gecko!
I have also taken some
photographs of Polly at different times of day to
demonstrate the amazing colour change which crested
geckos can show between daytime and night time (when
they are at their most active)! Here she is in
her daytime colours (left) and night time colours
(right), quite an impressive change I'm sure you
will agree:  
As well
as these images Polly is also an ideal gecko to
demonstrate how the dalmatian spotting of crested
geckos changes and develops over time.
Unfortunately I don't have any good photographs of
her as a baby but you can see how the spots increase
in size (and how new ones develop) in these images
below:
 
The left
image was taken on February 8th 2011 and the right
image on June 8th 2011, so just four months apart.
If you look closely at the back of the head and neck
in particular you can see that the spots have
increased in size and some new ones have developed
too!!
Polly is
now large enough to go out with me on the occasional
visit and so far she has proven to be VERY popular
with everybody she has met!!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have
just this evening taken some new images of
King
Julian my grey banded king snake as he is
getting bigger all the time and looking absolutely
beautiful as you can see here!
For more
images of this gorgeous snake please follow the blue
text link above!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
30th May
2011
Following a fantastic but very busy month of
visiting schools, parties and all sorts of other
events I am delighted to have time to sit down and
share some excellent animal news! Firstly I
have acquired a few more fabulous new animals in the
fortnight since my last update, having attended the
British Tarantula Society's 2011 exhibition and
trade fair last weekend - one of the annual
highlights of many invertebrate keepers' calendars!
First up
of the new arrivals are two wonderful new
tarantulas, the first being a
Chaco golden knee tarantula named Fluffy!
People
who met me during the very early days of Jonathan's
Jungle Roadshow may feel they recognise Fluffy,
especially because I have named this spider after
the one I had back then! I always regretted
selling the 'original' Fluffy back then after
deciding to do so and I am so pleased to have
replaced her with this beauty! I just know
that anyone who meets her will find her amazing, and
she is not even fully grown yet!!
Next up
is a stunning 'Peru purple'
pink toed tarantula, which my son Jay has named
Violet:
As you
can hopefully see her body has a beautiful purplish
tinge, on her legs in particular, and I have to say
that in good light she looks absolutely amazing!
For more information about either one of these
fabulous spiders please click on the blue text in their
descriptions above.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As well
as these new tarantulas I also bought some other
fantastic invertebrates, starting with these amazing
looking giant Florida
katydids!
Katydids
are bush crickets and this particular species are
native to Florida and Cuba, however as always these
animals were bred here in the UK by good friends of
mine! I purchased an adult pair as well as
some smaller nymphs from another good friend who has
also had breeding success with this species, as you
can see below these small ones are very cute
indeed!!
Next up
are two new praying
mantises, both of which were bred by the same lovely
people as the adult katydids. The first of these is a species
known commonly as the
Australian king
mantis or giant rainforest mantis, originating
from the rainforests of north-eastern Australia:
This
species is one of Australia's largest and this
individual isn't yet fully grown despite already
being quite large! The second mantis is
currently only a tiny nymph, but of a species which
will in time get even bigger than the one above.
She is a female European giant mantis originating
from Cyprus! I'll create a page for this one
later when she is big enough to use in my
sessions...
As well
as the spiders, katydids and mantises I also
purchased a species of stick insect I've never kept
before, an unusual one with the scientific name Onchestus rentzi
but more commonly
known as the
crowned stick insect due to their unusual head
structure!!
As you
can see above they are fabulous stick/branch mimics
and I now have stick insects in my collection which
resemble sticks/branches, living leaves, dead
leaves, bark and moss - they demonstrate an amazing
range of colours, shapes, sizes and patterns which
is fantastic for sessions linked to camouflage or
how animals are suited to their habitats!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As well as all of these new
animals I have also had some baby news this week, as
I found quite a large number of newly-hatched
Diapherodes gigantea
in my communal stick insect enclosure!
These are one of my favourite species, as well as
being a big favourite with both children and adults
who meet them and I think they are one of the cutest
when newly hatched too!!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally
this week I am delighted to report that
Smartie the Antilles pink toed
tarantula has moulted again, for the sixth time
since I bought her in October 2010! I have to
say that her post-moult colouration this time is
absolutely phenomenal, with lots of the beautiful
purples, pinks and reds really coming out now!
For
those of you who are new to the website, or haven't
been following Smartie's progress since I bought
her, here is a comparison of how small (and blue)
she was when I bought her in October 2010 at just a
few weeks old compared to how she looks now!!!!
For much
more information about Smartie and LOTS more
pictures please visit her page by clicking
here, you won't regret it!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally,
and very unfortunately, I do have some very sad news
to report for the first time ever on this page.
This is that my lovely metallic pink toed tarantula
Angelina, who was so popular with children of all
ages (and many adults) sadly died this week.
For reasons I do not understand she failed to moult
successfully and despite my very best efforts to
save her I was unable to do so. She will be
sadly missed by myself in particular but also the
many children who thought she was fantastic, as
indeed she was.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
15th May
2011 The
month of May has so far been an exceptionally busy
one for bookings (and will continue to be for the
rest of the month) and it
has also seen my first new animal acquisitions of
2011, all of which I am extremely pleased with!
First up is my first ever New Caledonian giant
gecko, the largest living gecko species on
earth! The individual I have purchased is only
a baby (it hatched just three weeks ago on April 24th)
so it is currently very little and cute as you can
see here:
Despite
being tiny now (weighing in at just under 6g when
s/he arrived this week) this gecko will be considerably
heavier than any of my others when it is fully grown
in a few years, potentially reaching somewhere
between 200 - 250g! It will not have its own
webpage for some time yet, not until it is well
settled in and ready for me to introduce into my
jungle roadshow collection hopefully later this year.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As well as buying the baby
giant I also acquired two new
crested geckos from
the same breeders, the lovely people at Lilly
Exotics. The reason I bought these, despite
already having a large collection of crested geckos,
is that they are both stunning pinstripe crested
geckos. 'Pinstripe' is the name given to a
crested gecko when it has a pair of stripes running
from the head down to the tail along the crests,
this really does produce beautiful geckos as you can
see:
The
second one was purchased tailless, that is it had
lost its tail at a young age, and whilst it doesn't
quite have such perfect & full pinstripes as the
individual above, it is still very beautiful!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As well
as the three new geckos I have also purchased this
week a pair of beautiful African flower beetles, of
a species known only by its scientific name of
Mecynorrhina
ugandensis.
This species occurs in lots
of different colour forms, ranging from browns to
yellows to bright blues and even black, with varying
quantities of white/cream markings ranging from none
to lots! Mine are of a blue/green variety and
as you can see from these pictures they are
especially attractive individuals!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As well as all these new
animals I also have some other good news to report
this week, as Ruby the Mexican
red knee tarantula moulted again successfully,
this being the seventh time she has moulted since I bought her in September
2007!
There is a noticeable size
difference in Ruby following this moult and I am
looking forward to introducing the new, larger Ruby to audiences
old and new when she is recovered from this
energy-sapping process!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Finally this week I took
some new photos of my baby
tailless whip
scorpions, all of which are doing brilliantly!
Here is the group of 30 which I have left here at
the moment (having found excellent new homes for the
other 27 already): 
Here are a selection of
them on my hand, you can clearly see how large they
have got if you compare these pictures to those
taken in late February / early March on the news
pages below!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6th May
2011
Apologies for the lack of updates in recent weeks,
this is mainly due to me being so very busy with
bookings of all kinds! First up today I have
some beautiful new photographs of
Goldie my
Taiwanese beauty snake to share with you:
These were taken in my back
garden during the recent fantastic weather and as
I'm sure you'll agree Goldie looks absolutely
beautiful in the sunshine!! Goldie has become
a regular visitor to schools, birthday parties and
other visits in recent months and he is very popular
due to his beautiful colours and calm personality!
For even more pictures please click
here.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have also taken some
updated pictures of a couple of my
chahoua! As you can
see these amazing geckos are looking beautiful and
getting more colourful all the time, on one of them
the green colour which it will have as an adult is
starting to show through which is fantastic!
For more pictures and
information about this fabulous species please click
here.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
My baby
tailless whip
scorpions are now (amazingly) nearly eleven
weeks old and they are doing brilliantly! Some
have gone to new homes as planned but the many which
are still here are growing rapidly and eating lots
of small crickets as a result!! Here is one of
them following a recent moult looking fabulous and a
whole lot bigger than they were when they first
hatched!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I have realised that for
some reason I didn't manage to post an update here
when Smartie the Antilles pink
toe tarantula moulted again back on April 1st,
sorry about that! She is looking amazing as
always but following this moult she has taken on
even more of the beautiful pink & purple colouration
I have described before, so she is now looking much
less blue than she did!
As you can see she is
looking quite amazing and is getting fluffier an
fluffier all the time!
Watch this space for more news soon as I
am acquiring some fabulous new animals during w/c
9th May and I am VERY excited about all of them!!
Photos and information to follow...
|
