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Jonathan's Jungle News  Last updated on Tuesday 20th July 2010

News and important events in the lives of the animals of Jonathan's Jungle Roadshow are reported and updated here from time to time - feel free to check back in the future to see what is happening in Jonathan's animal collection!  For more information about any of the animals featured here, click the blue highlighted words in the relevant text. 

** N.B.  Some news stories (and their page links) may refer to animals which I no longer have in my collection so please check the Meet the Animals page for correct & up-to-date information about the animals in my current collection!

20th July 2010  It has been another excellent couple of weeks for new babies!  As well as the Peruvian horsehead grasshopper babies reported below dated 7th July, I have now had some more fabulous babies hatch!  The first of these belong to Margaret, my giant Asian praying mantis:

These very cute little guys hatched from an egg sac (correctly called an ootheca) which is a spongy structure which praying mantises make to lay their eggs inside.  In the pictures below you can clearly see the barrel-like ootheca along with the many, many babies (nymphs) which have just emerged from it! 

Once they have emerged, the nymphs hang from silken threads just below the ootheca to dry out and moult their exoskeleton.  In the picture below you can see lots of empty moulted 'skins' (exuvia) just towards the bottom of the picture - once moulted they start charging about very quickly indeed!

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I have also had more crested gecko babies hatch in recent weeks, and as ever they are absolutely beautiful!  I have now hatched nearly 100 babies of this species since I started keeping them a few years ago, and they remain my favourite gecko species I have kept to date.  When you see them as babies like these newly-hatched ones below it is not hard to see why!!!

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Finally, as if that wasn't enough new baby news for one day, I have also had lots more jungle nymphs hatch in recent days (which is brilliant) AND my first nymphs for some time of a species known only by its scientific name of Haaniella dehaani!! 

This species doesn't have its own page at present (hence the lack of link to their page within the text above) as I don't currently have any adults of this species.  As these grow they will feature on a page themselves but for the moment they are very small!

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7th July 2010  I have had a very happy hatch of new babies in recent days as my first ever baby Peruvian horsehead grasshoppers have hatched!!  The babies are tiny and extremely cute as you can see, but boy can they jump!  They are very difficult to photograph as they don't stay still long enough! 

You can see how tiny they are from this picture of one of them on my fingertip above!  For pictures of the amazing adult animals please click here!

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23rd June 2o10  I have today acquired some incredible new animals!  These amazing looking beetles are commonly known as frog beetles and they originate in south-east Asian countries including Thailand. 

Frog beetles are exquisitely beautiful insects as these pictures show.  For this reason sadly they are very popular as art exhibits, which involves them being killed, dried and framed before being sold.  The individuals I have acquired would themselves have been intended for the art market, but I am now planning to use them to educate people about why their beauty should be appreciated LIVE not dead!!

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2nd June 2010  I have acquired many new animals in the last two weeks and I am delighted with all of them!  Firstly I bought my first new snake of 2010, a rather gorgeous captive-bred juvenile Taiwanese beauty snake:

This species of snake is also sometimes referred to as the stripe-tailed rat snake, for obvious reasons as seen below, but I much prefer the common name of Taiwanese beauty snake because I think they are so beautiful!  This individual is only about eight months old but it won't be long before he is much larger, as they are one of the fastest growing rat snakes in the world!

For more information and pictures of this lovely snake please click on the blue highlighted words above the top picture.

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I attended the British Tarantula Society's (BTS) annual show at the end of May and whilst I didn't purchase any new spiders I did buy many other fabulous invertebrates, my favourites of which have to be a new pair of tailless whip scorpions:

Despite their fearsome appearance whip scorpions really are lovely and not at all dangerous, being non-venomous unlike true scorpions.

Whip scorpions are truly amazing creatures for LOTS of reasons and one of my favourite types of animals in the world!  For lots more information and pictures of these remarkable animals please click here.  You won't regret it!!

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I also acquired a beautiful new giant Asian praying mantis, which I took some rather lovely pictures of in my garden on my return home from the midlands where the BTS show took place:

This beautiful new animal is now my new 'Margaret', as any of you who know me will already know that I always name my giant Asian praying mantids Margaret to save confusion for younger children!  She is absolutely stunning and even better in real life!

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My final new purchase from the BTS show was the largest individual stick insect I have ever kept in my collection!  She is an adult female of an Australian species known as Acrophylla wuelfingi, sometimes known as the giant walking stick or Titan stick insect due to their huge size!  She is exceptionally beautiful as you can see below:

She measures 23 cm from the front of her head to the end of her abdomen, and when her front legs are outstretched she measures a massive 34 cm!  She really must be seen to be believed...

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19th May 2010  All of the baby imperial scorpions which were born on March 13th 2010 have now moulted for the second time and are looking fantastic as you can see below! 

At this small size the scorplings are perfectly safe to handle as their small sting cannot even break the skin.  The venom of imperial scorpions is not dangerous to humans anyway, even when they are adults, but having experienced the pain of a sting from a large adult female a few years ago I don't handle my adults any more!

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Back on February 22nd 2010 I bought some tiny nymphs of a stick insect species known only by its scientific name of Phobaeticus magnus. This is a species which originates in north-eastern Thailand and Laos, the females of which can grow to 30cm in length!!  When I bought them they were only about 3 - 4 cm in length and looked like this:

The next pictures are of some of these same nymphs and were taken today, as you can see they have grown quite a bit!!

Even though they have grown so much the largest of the female nymphs (in the first two pictures) is still 'only' about 15 - 16 cm long, so they still have plenty more growing left to do!  Watch this space for how they are getting on in the months to come...

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5th May 2010  More excellent news to report today!  Angelina my metallic pink toed tarantula has moulted this week, for the first time since I bought her in February 2010, and is now looking absolutely beautiful!  The picture below shows her having just moulted, although it is difficult to make out what is going on in the picture as she and her moulted exoskeleton (or exuvium) are both right inside the thick web retreat that she has created in her tall vivarium!

Basically Angelina is mostly to the left of the picture above (with her head hidden) and her exuvium is partly hidden as she is on top of it.  The parts you can see clearly are the exuvium's fangs (the sharp black needle-like things in amongst the red hairs at the bottom of the picture) and some of the foot pads (the brown coloured areas towards the top right of the picture)!  It is much easier to see her when she is nearly out of her web retreat or on my hand as below, now looking stunningly bluish in colour!

Her exuvium is considerably duller in colouration compared to her fresh new colouration as you can see in the picture below. 

This means that she has not been looking at her best at all since I bought her, as the colour of the exuvium above represents how she looked when I bought her and I thought that she was beautiful then!  Now that she has a fresh new exoskeleton I am amazed at just how attractive she is, and can see much more clearly why this species is commonly known as the metallic pink toed tarantula!  I hope you like the way she looks now as much as I do!!

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If you would like to check back on any 'old' news please use the links below!

News March - April 2010

News January - February 2010

News from 2009

News from 2008

News from 2007

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