I separated Tiny and Sam after finding Jiminy dead, as Tiny is my last male. Hopefully Tiny mated with Sam, the few times I saw them interact they seemed scared by each other, but hopefully they mated when I was not looking. He and Sam were removed from their cages and put in a larger enclosure for mating, and thus had not established territories, but I put Jiminy in Swirl's enclosure that she had already been in for a while. I think had I removed Swirl and put her in unfamiliar territory along with Jiminy, she may not have killed him. Instead, I put Jiminy in her territory, and I think as soon as she saw him she probably freaked out and attacked him.
My Scolopendra polymorpha "Rio Grand", Tirek, has finally surfaced after a long fast, he has been in a burrow at the bottom of his cage for several weeks now. I fed him a Parcoblatta americana nymph, and an adult female Parcoblatta lata that was dying. He's fattened up a bit, but still looks a little skinny. I don't think he even molted the whole time he was in hiding. Hopefully he will stay active and eat a bit more, would love for him to start growing.
Here are a couple of pictures I snapped of him yesterday:
Centipedes are such amazing creatures, and this species is a very pretty one! Can't wait until he reaches full size, he should get pretty big when full grown!
A few weeks ago I separated a couple of Coelus ciliatus larva for pupation, I put them in small deli cups filled with almost an inch of a moist, compressed sand and coconut fiber mixture. I waited for them to build pupal cells at the bottom of the enclosure, like most darkling beetle larva do, but they never did. I wondered if the larvae had died or were still digging around in search of a suitable pupation spot.
I had almost given up on them, so yesterday I put about ten more larva in containers for pupation, hoping they'd have better luck. However, today while inspecting my collection, I noticed that two freshly eclosed beetles were on the surface of the of the substrate in the both the deli cups!
I have moved them to a container full of dry sand, with some dead leaves and a piece of cat food in the cage for food and shelter. I'll be keeping them in there for a week or so, until their exoskeletons have hardened.
Here are some pictures of them:
I am very happy that I've reared these to adulthood, however I am a little upset that I was not able to get any pictures of the pupae. I'll need to be more diligent with the other larvae I attempt to pupate, and dig them up after a while to find a pupa. Once I do I will have captured every important part of this species' life cycle on camera!
Well, that's gonna be it for this post, I hope you guys enjoyed, and I'll see you all next time! :)
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