Ally's Eight-Legged Journey

It feels as though I have only just got these critters, but the first spiny leaf insect has matured. It's hardly surprising. Since they arrived, these stick insects have decimated the raspberry plants that I grow in my garden. I am constantly clipping fresh leaves to put into their enclosure, and they have been molting quite often. The most recent molt for this one has resulted in a mature male stick insect. The easiest way to tell that it is mature is the presence of wings, as nymphs generally don't have wings, and a subadult insect can have at the most wing nubs. So this insect suddenly emerging from his molt with wings tells me he is mature. The presence of full length, fully functional wings tells me that this is a male. Female stick insects tend to be much larger than males, and only have vestigial wings that can't carry their bulky weight. This guy is long and skinny, indicating a male. Obviously, he is quite a bit larger than I was anticipating - most of the s...

It's my birthday! As it is my birthday and I am a Scorpio (not that I put any stock into astrology) I thought that we'd discuss Diablo some more. And as much as I'd like to think that Diablo is wishing me a Happy Birthday, the cold black of his eyes tells me otherwise.... Or, maybe I should say her eyes - yes, I now believe Diablo to be a girl. While I had Diablo out of the vivarium the other day to rehouse, I snapped this photo in the hopes of sexing her: Scorpions have two comblike structures called pectines which you can see in the photo above, or highlighted in this diagram below: Both sexes have these pectines, which they use as an additional sensory organ - each tooth of the comb is covered in chemoreceptors which have developed to detect scent trails, pheromones, or other chemical signals. Both sexes use them to track down prey or to find their way home to their burrow, for example. However, the male also uses his pectines to tract down receptive females for br...

Big Spood has finally gifted me with a molt, and with it I have been able to confirm the sex. I have discussed sexing tarantulas on this blog several times here and here, so this was an easy spood to sex. In my most recent post about tarantula sexing, we looked at Incy Wincy's molt and concluded that he was a male. When his molt was flipped over, there was no sign of a pouch (known as a spermathecae) under his epigastric furrow. As a reminder, this was his molt - the circled area is where there would have been a pouch in which to store sperm for fertilisation, had he been a female: As you can see, there's nothing there. I had previously posted to social media asking for people a little bit more knowledgeable than myself to attempt to sex Big Spood from her underside. This is less accurate than molt sexing as the differences are much more subtle - it is all down to the angle and the shape of the epigastric furrow. This is the photograph that I submitted to the forums, and ...

I haven't had much to report on Ladybug for a little while. Ladybug is a very shy spider who spends most of his time hiding in his nest, only coming out when he's wanting to hunt. He's not overly sociable and he definitely doesn't like to be handled, which I have to respect. Since I got him I've been umming and ahhing about what gender he is - His colouration seemed to indicate that he was a female, as males are supposed to be scarlet red. However, after his most recent molt he seems to be developing the chonky front legs and the "boxing glove" pedipalps of a male. He is still clearly a sub-adult, so maybe his colouration will change with his next molt, but I definitely believe him to be a male now. You can clearly see that his front legs have become chonkier than his other six (all the better to dance the mamba with), and the tips of his pedipalps are becoming more bulbous. He may only have one molt left before he's mature and unfortunately I don...

Incy has gifted me with a molt! He is strutting his stuff in his brand new clothes - his colouring is getting much darker now, with long peachy hairs, and his adult markings starting to show through. This is his second molt with me, and he is growing fast. Which isn't really a surprise as an adult of his species, Lasiodora parahybana can reach up to 11 inches across. As we have a nice fresh molt, and at a decent size, I thought I might try to sex Incy based on what I learned when sexing Big Spood . When his molt came out of the enclosure, it was completely shrivelled up where his abdomen would have been, so the first thing I had to do was to drop a little bit of water over the shrivelled skin, and gently tease it apart with some delicate tweezers. This left me with this trypophobic nightmare: Fun fact - the odd leaf shaped part in the middle of the cephalothorax is Incy's "sucking stomach". This is a muscular stomach which helps him to suck up his liquid food a...

With all this space to wander around in, Big Spood has started to walk on the sides of his enclosure, inadvertantly flashing his underparts at me. As he is the biggest of my spoods, and only him and Incy Wincy are really large enough to sex, I have been wondering about Big Spoods gender. Sexing a mature tarantula is much easier, as the two sexes are visually different as adults. But as a growing juvenile, it is harder. Now, I have already posted these images to two different online resources, and both of them came back to me and told me that Big Spood is most likely a FEMALE , though it's easier to tell once she has molted. Now, if she is a female, then I'm happy, because females can live in the region of twenty years, compared to the paltry four of the male. But how can we tell that Big Spood is a female? To be perfectly honest, I can't tell one from the other, although I have been reading around the subject. *Side note: Check out those awesome fangs!* Apparently, th...

Tyson. Tyson, Tyson, Tyson.... I love this little mantis - he is full of personality, he loves to eat, he loves to come out and be handled. I especially love that after I named him Tyson for his little boxing gloves, I discovered that he also likes to nibble me! So he boxes and he bites, and I love that he is just living up to his name in every way. Here he is giving my finger a little nibble. He likes to walk up my finger, nibbling as he goes. He is so small right now that I don't even feel it, but I do think it's incredibly cute. He moulted this week, for the first time since he got here. When Catchy molts, she looks significantly bigger each time, but that's not the case with Tyson. Maybe Tyson is just a slower growing species, but I didn't even realise he had moulted until I saw his shed skin lying on the floor. And since we're talking about mantids, I thought we might focus on Catchy for a little bit. Catchy is definitely a favourite invertebrate of m...