Mike here, ..

 We had a really busy week on half term and we hoped you enjoyed our craft sessions and love bug quiz.
The winner was chosen at random and I am sure they will enjoy their bag of goodies.
This week saw us receiving a new Salmon Pink Tarantula from a member of the public; she is huge and is settling in our quarantine room, we plan on putting her on display later this year to give Tallulah who is on show in our shop a change of scenery .
The rhinoceros beetle grubs are growing really fast and eating there way through all the rotten wood and carrots that we can give them.
I also started to pin the sheds of our animals, in a nice display case which will be on our encounter zone soon. Also this week saw one of our young black widows mature into a male, meaning once we have fattened up our adult female we can try and breed them. If he survives his first mating he will be paired with another female.
 We will keep you posted on all the goings on of our animals and we hope to see you soon.
Mike

Picture taken by Karen Entwistle

In other news our pink toed tarantula has shed so it will take a day to harden her new skin. You have to be careful not to feed them if they are shedding their skin as crickets have a tendency to eat the animal while it sheds.

So if you want a really fun time whilst your off school why don’t you come and visit the BugWorld Experience

Wiggles and Giggles

Jeff

I hope you all heard me on the radio, I was on Juice fm last Thursday talking about our Yellow tailed Scorpion Hope who we had to send to the vets to be anesthetised as she was covered in mites which could have been fatal. She is doing great now and should be on display soon.
We also found ten Rhinoceros beetle grubs, hopefully there should be more but we don’t want to disturb them too much.

 The McLeay’s stick insects had a full clean out this week and we found over 200 eggs. So we have plenty of these fantastic insects to come which is great news as they are a firm favourite here at BugWorld.
This week saw the arrival of another  yellow tailed scorpion, this rather big girl has came to us from another collection and is settling into our quarantine room and will stay there waiting for our current scorpions to catch up to her size.
That’s all for this week guys
Hope to see you all soon especially over half term

Mike

Two of our lined mantis were put in together to see if the female liked the male.
It took two days for anything to happen and unfortunately when we came in the next day the male was mating with the female but she had eaten his head. We left the headless male in with the female  and she decided to eat his whole body.

This behaviour is quite common, even if the female is fattened up beforehand.

We have now left the female alone, and hopefully she will deposit an egg sac (ootheca) in the next couple of weeks. The ootheca can take up to 3 months to hatch, so we are in for a long wait.

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Also this week our spare salmon pink tarantula went to another collection. This tarantula was brought into us by the R.S.P.C.A as a cruelty case. All the staff at BugWorld are really pleased that she has found a new home after being mistreated, and we all hope she settles in well to her new home

Thats all for now

Wiggles and giggles

Jeff

Happy new year to you all. We all hope you had a great time over the festive season.
All our young stick insects are growing well and eating us out of house and home. They will soon be out to meet you all.
We also sourced a new male Lined mantis to mate with one of our adult females, we have now given her a bigger enclosure and feeding her up so she is nice a full when we introduce the new male. This is so there is less chance of her eating him. Although it’s not as common as you think it’s still a possibility and we wouldn’t want him to become a snack for her.
Our huntsman on display has produced another egg sac; let’s keep our fingers crossed this time. She is not the greatest of mums so we have not had much luck so far with previous egg sacs.
As mentioned in a previous blog we have young Assassin Bugs, well they are growing well and we now have ten.
Also those of you who have been would of seen Jake our Red Knee Tarantula in the savannah zone. When we rescued him he had a very small left back leg this was due to being kept in the wrong environment and when he shed he lost his leg. When I came in on Boxing Day he had shed again and you can’t really see the difference between leg sizes. Although he now has a bit of an attitude to go with his new leg.
His shed is on show at our encounter zone and I’m sure our presenters will be happy to point out his small leg.

It’s nice and warm here in Bugworld so come along and meet our bugs.

See you soon.

Mike

I can’t believe its almost Christmas, this year has flown by so fast. 

We have some new addtions to the BugWorld family. These include 2 pairs of adult black widows, 9 juvenile black widows, and 2 fishing spiders.
Our female black widow that is on display will hopefully be paired up with a male next year. Before we can put a male in with the female black widow we first have to feed her up.
The reason we feed her up is because Black widows have a tendancy to eat the males during courtship, so this will hopefully prevent that from happening.

Our new fishing spiders are currently off display as they have to go through a quarantine period. Each new animal is quarantined so that they do not pass on anything nasty to our other animals. Once we feel the fishing spiders are fit and healthy, we can then look at introducing the male to the female we already have.

The macleays spectre stick insects that are on display are thriving. We must have over 50 animals in there and this number keeps on increasing!

The lined mantis that we mentioned in previous blogs are growing fast and 6 out of the 13 animals have matured into adults.

I hope everyone has a great Christmas and I hope to see you all next year.

Wiggles and Giggles

Jeff

We have had a great week here at BugWorld we had the privilege of holding a 3 day conference called TIWG, this stands for Terrestrial Invertebrate Working Group. We are very lucky to have held this especially with in our first 6 months of opening. We discussed all matters to do with Bugs with invertebrate keepers from around the country.
Some of our colleagues from another Zoo brought up some scorpions for us to identify. These turned out to be a slender bark scorpion another little male to add to our growing collection of this species we now have three boys, all imported beasties. The second scorpion turned out to be a female yellow tailed scorpion. We are over the moon with this little girl as those of you who have been to visit us will know we display this species.
The most common way of sexing scorpions is to compare the pectines these are comb like structures on the underside of the scorpion’s body and the scorpions use them as a sensory organ, in the male scorpion they are normally longer and thinner. Also males will normally have thinner bodies. Always exceptions to the rule though guys.

Jeff and Jenny had an exciting job of trying to take photographs of the underside of our Giant centipede, not the friendliest of our insects. The reason for this was for us to sex it. We have had to send the pictures to a centipede expert as centipedes are notoriously difficult to sex. We will let you know the outcome.

Our little mantises are not so little now we have 2 of the 13 now mature into boys. So we are on the lookout for a non related girl so we can try and breed them. Although not Bug related we did get a phone call about a gecko which had been imported from Thailand which we went to collect lucky for us we had a room full of zoo keepers who could take it to more suitable surroundings and where it couldn’t eye up any of our bugs.
That’s all for this week guys.

Take care

Mike

We now have 140 thorny stick insect nymphs and the hissing cockroaches have also had another batch of babies – about 80 in the last couple of days. Keeping an eye on all these kids is a full time job, they get everywhere.

Elsewhere, our young red knee tarantula shed its skin and me and mike have decided that it is a male after thinking that it was a female. Tarantulas are notoriously difficult to sex but the reason we think this is due to its body shape. Males are more slender whereas females are alot rounder.

It was feeding time for the leeches on Thursday. We filled sausage skin with blood and then dropped into their tank. They all fed and have now swollen to three times the original size. The leeches now won’t need to be fed for another 4 months. The school group we had in that day certainly seemed excited to see this taking place.

And finally I have some exclusive news. As from next week a brand new exhibit is going into the encounter zone. The enclosure will be filled with emperor scorpions. So if you want a day out with a bit of bite, come and see us and the critters.

Wiggles and giggles,

Jeff

This week we had our first Assassin Bugs hatch out, we were very excited to see them. Although we had not seen the adults mating we knew they were at that age and have been hoping we would see the young soon. Up to now we have four. These guys are feisty little bugs and I watched one tackle a wax worm which was easily 4 times bigger than the assassin nymph.

Also as Jeff mentioned we have some baby stick insects born we have over 30 now….They are eating us out of house and home.
This week saw our beautiful Gooty Ornamental Tarantula go on display; she is a very rare spider and is now on the ICUN red list as of September this year. She is just settling in to her new home and has been a little bit shy. 

The Huntsman spider we have on display that came from a supermarket has produced a egg sac so fingers crossed this time we could get some young, I’ll keep you posted.

That’s all for now folks, take care.

Mike

Things have finally settled down after the hectic week leading up to halloween. Some good news is that our thorny stick insects have had babies. The female stick insects laid the eggs around July so we had to wait patiently for these to hatch. It can take up to 6 months for the eggs to hatch depending on the conditions.
Up to now 3 nymphs have hatched but We are sure there are many more to come. 

The lined mantis that we have had since they were tiny are growing really fast and they have now been moved into bigger homes. Also the 5 rhino beetles have been moved into a larger enclosure.

Wiggles and giggles

Jeff