WEIRD WEEKEND: Max Blake

For the second year running, we will be broadcasting the Weird Weekend (almost) in its entirety here on CFZtv. There were a couple of glitches due to technical problems beyond our control, but on the whole everything went well, so 95% of the conference will be up in the next days....

WHO LET THE (PRAIRIE) DOGS OUT?

Kithra sent us an interesting story yesterday. She knows that Gavin L-W is on leave of absence while he writes a book about guitars (we'd better get a copy Mr Wilson, or we will sulk mightily), so she is sending newsblog submissions to us. I am glad she did, because it has opened up a whole can of worms. Because this is the third Cornish record of prairie dogs that we have received in the last two years, and the second UK report this year.

The news report, which can be read in its original glory HERE reads:

A couple from Cornwall have photographed a prairie dog while they were on a moor in Cornwall.
Linda and Godfrey Stevens were on the Goss Moor trail when they spotted a small furry creature that they could not recognise.

Godfrey Stevens said: "We didn't expect to see anything like that." Newquay Zoo confirmed the picture was that of a prairie dog. They are mammals from the squirrel family and are from the grasslands of North America. Mr Stevens said: "We expected to see wild flowers. It was a real surprise for us." John Meeks from Newquay Zoo said it was a black-tailed prairie dog "without a doubt".

Well, yes. It is indeed a black tailed prairie dog without a doubt. Unlike previous incumbents, the current management of Newquay Zoo are not inclined to making idiotic quasi-cryptozoological statements in the press. But the important thing is how did it get there? Prairie dogs are North American ground squirrels that live in large social groups on the grasslands of North America. And it is the 'large social groups' that is the important feature here.

Black tailed prairie dogs are highly inappropriate pets for this reason, but also for a logistical one; they are great burrowers and will dig long tunnels. Therefore, unless one is very careful, the chances of escapes are very high indeed. There is also a third reason why they are not widely kept as pets. Look at this pricelist, pinched today, from the website of a highly regarded specialist animal dealer:

Arabian Spiny Mouse Acomys cahirinus dimidiatus £ 10.00
Egyptian Spiny Mouse Acomys cahirinus cahirinus £ 10.00
Harvest Mouse Micromys minutus £ 25.00
Striped Grass Mouse Lemniscomys barbarus £ 10.00
Multimammate Mouse Mastomys natalensis £ 5.00
African Pygmy Mouse Mus minutoides £ 15.00
African Dwarf Dormouse Graphiurus murinus £ 25.00
Duprasi (fat tailed gerbil) Pachyuromys duprasi £ 15.00
Pallid Gerbil Gerbillus perpallidus £ 10.00
Shaws Jird Meriones shawi £ 15.00
Bushy Tailed Jird Sekeetamys £ 25.00
Acacia Rats Thallomys paedulucus £ 10.00
Nile Rats Arvicanthis niloticus £ 10.00
Hand Reared Gambian Pouched Rats Cricetomys gambianus - Males £ 250.00
Cricetomys gambianus - Females £ 300.00
Richardson Ground Squirrel Spermophilus richardsonii £ 100.00
13 Lined Ground Squirrel Spermophilus tridecemlineatus £ 100.00
Black Tailed Prarie Dog Cynomys ludovicianus £ 100.00
African Pygmy Hedgehogs Atelerix albiventris £ 150.00 from
Long Eared Hedgehogs Hemiechinus auritus auritus £ 150.00 from
Sugar Gliders Petaurus breviceps £ 150.00
Steppe Lemmings Lagurus largurus £ 20.00
Mediterranean Lemmings Microtus guentheri £ 15.00
Lesser Jerboa Jaculus jaculus £ 75.00
Greater Jerboa Jaculus orientalis £ 100.00

All the ground squirrels, including prairie dogs, are expensive at a hundred quid a pop, and the fact we have now received three reports from the same geographical area between Feb 2008 and this morning, would suggest that either there is someone in the area with more money than sense who keeps on buying these charming little rodents only to let them escape, or there is a well-established colony of these rather charming little fellows in captivity somewhere in mid-Cornwall, and that the escape record of this afore-mentioned colony is somewhat akin to Hogan's Heroes.

I think that an intensive search of the area with small mammal traps is probably in order, and that that those in charge of the British list should really come to terms with the fact that we have a new invasive species on our hands.

Hurrah!

GUEST BLOGGER NICK WADHAM: Ants on the table and confused red admirals.

Thirty three years ago a little three year old toddler was instantly captivated by the chaotic myriad scurrying to and fro of countless little black specks in the back garden - black ants. With deft nimble fingers this little boy decided to catch as many of these little creatures as he could, but then the question arose in his mind of what to do with them next.

‘I know’ he thought to himself, ‘I’ll take them inside to show Mummy.’

So he did just that, but Mummy was nowhere to be found. The boy decided to safely store them on the kitchen table and get some more, just to be sure. After easily an hour of catching as many as his soft little hands could hold and running them to their new kitchen pent house, his typically gentle pink appendages, had become the throbbing crimson of the flesh of a blood orange.

As he contemplated his stinging skin, the boy surveyed the teeming tabletop, thousands of tiny ants, trammelling to and fro to get nowhere in particular, thoughtlessly trampling over one another in constant Brownian motion.

‘Yes, Mummy will be pleased!’ He thought to himself with satisfaction.
A bright shrill scream pierced the little boy’s reverie, swift and sudden like the crack of a ringmaster’s whip.

‘Nicholas Wadham!’

Mummy was most definitely “not amused!”

And now?

Just five days to go until the same boy heaves to with his wonderful wife and equally wonderful children to bring you Bugfest SW’s Carnival of Monsters. Recently turned thirty six (27th January), I am writing my first ever blog at the bequest of our friend, Jon Downes.

Sometimes people really beggar belief, just last week I put up lots of roadside promotional material to reinforce our Bugfest presence and to draw the attention of potential new visitors, all the more important as we are giving a lot of money to charity out of the takings, from the rest of which we will at least hopefully cover our costs. The next day however we were told by the local authority that we had to take them down, then, on the next breath we were told okay, keep them up, then, ten minutes later, we were told to take them down again. I have since found that if we have the permission of private land owners that we can display our posters. Confused yet?

We were. So today, I went out and found the landowners and actually got their permission to fix our posters to their boundary fences. Can you believe it? The difference in the original position of some of the posters was no more than two feet to the left, I am beginning to wonder if Orwell was in some way psychic, as opposed to a highly intellectual observer of society and the governing bodies who tell people what to do; there is definitely some form of inner party mentality inherent in South Somerset District Council. Now I am the proud owner of the title of anarchist, just awarded to me today by Jon in recognition of my efforts to topple the pillars of tyranny that seek to make our difficult lives all the more difficult, so that they can justify being paid to do absolutely sod all with their time and the money we pay in council tax for them to do it.

No doubt you have guessed who I am. I’m Nick, the other half of the partnership that drives Bugfest. I am responsible for the design and production of all of the marketing materials and keep an eye out for invertebrates that shouldn’t be on sale at the show such as CITES protected and DWA, not an easy task when you are also in charge of making sure that your five year old son doesn’t get lost or bored. But thanks to the fact that we have traders with solid reputations this has never been an issue.

Bugfest is a dream-come-true! For years I have been taking my daughters to the AES, but Henry is too young to endure the three hour drive to London and the subsequent long day at the races too. Kara recognised this and decided that if Henry couldn’t go to the mountain, then the mountain must come to Henry. We talked about the idea, Kara not having the first microgram of a clue about bugs, then, decided to go for it. I just gave her a few names and email addresses of the people that I knew personally, and from that, as a result of my wife being the wonderful people magnet that she is, and the support of everyone involved from its conception it snowballed into the first event at Holy Trinity Church.

Because she is so good at getting things done, Kara stunned the traders last February by creating a turnout of just under one thousand visitors; everyone thought we’d be lucky to get three hundred, however my inner intuition was quietly confident, I just knew that the day was going to be great, but even my empathic nature was somewhat taken by surprise. The challenge now is to keep things fresh and different. We don’t want to be like the other shows, we want to open our little niche market up to the world, and how better to do that then through aiming at the general public as opposed to just the hardcore enthusiast.

Whilst visiting the Dalek Day at Fleet Air Arm Museum last summer, we hit on the idea, okay, pinched it, to combine bugs with Daleks. Why not?

Both are just as interesting, and great crowd pullers, one looks like it has come from the world of the BBC’s Doctor Who franchise, whilst the other actually has, and to date we have now got at least five Daleks in attendance, a Tom Baker era Cyberman, a Cybershade from the recent Christmas special, a clockwork robot from the Tennant era, a Roboform (psychotic santa robot), a scare crow from the Family of Blood episodes, hopefully a K9, a full size TARDIS, a number of fans dressed up in tribute to their favourite Doctor, and a Captain Jack Sparrow, we wanted Harkness, but a friend of mine of many years does a fantastic impression of the Pirates character, and being a kind charitable chap offered to dress up and get into role for the day to help raise money for the South West Children’s Hospice. So, at the end of the day, Captain Jack is Captain Jack, we are certainly pleased to have him on board. Pun fully intended! If that isn’t enough we have all the usual great traders without whom Bugfest would certainly struggle to exist.

Even now Kara is not altogether keen on bugs, but she knows a heck of a lot more about them. It is most amusing when people say to her how they didn’t know she was into bugs, to which she patiently explains that she isn’t, and that this is all for the benefit of me and the children. So, as you can see, I consider myself one lucky man to have a Kara by my side, but irrespective, Kara’s hard work and commitment has now earned her the cool nickname “Bug Girl”; I can see this one sticking for some time.

Being the organisers of Bugfest, people would assume we have a house full of invertebrates, when actually the reverse is true. We have a Giant African Land Snail, Millipede, two Hissing Cockroaches, seven species of tarantula and six species of stick insect, most of which reside at school during term time where the children in my bug club help to look after them.

Outside of the Bugfest world my time is taken up with being a full time Dad, as Kara is the main bread winner as a secondary school teacher (and a damn good one too), and I am a PGCE student mentor and FE teacher trainer. When I am not busy extolling the virtues of inclusive teaching practice and making learning fun and engaging, I run creative writing classes, and I am currently writing a story about fairies with my eldest daughter, but more on that one later as that is probably worthy of a blog of its own.

For me this Bugfest time of the year is so frantic and full of surprises, but nothing prepared me for the surprise that today held for me. My youngest daughter, Harriet, ran in from the garden in a flurry of excitement, yelling that she had found a frog, not impossible as the day was very warm, but I found it hard to believe the rest of her message as she was maintaining that she had also see three butterflies. Then, on reflection I thought that actually this too wasn’t impossible, as it really was a very warm day, so I dutifully went out to investigate with her, (expecting to see some drowsy small tortoise shells enjoying a quick bask in the sun), only to be stunned to find three red admirals slurping greedily from my early flowering japonica, which is always covered at this time of year in numerous racemes of fragrant sulphur-coloured drooping bells the size of a small finger nail.

As I understand it this is mainly considered a migratory species, but they are also known to sometimes hibernate in the south of England, which these ones seem to have done, so it is clear to see, we were not the only ones confused of late, our red admirals were definitely confused by today’s most clement climate.

Let’s just hope that this serves a strong positive omen of more pleasant surprises for this forthcoming Saturday’s Bugfest, Carnival of Monsters.

GUEST BLOGGER KARA WADHAM: Only a week to go

Bugfest SW-Carnival of Monsters 21st February 2009 Stanchester School TA19 6UG 10.30am

Preparations for Bugfest are going well, frantic, but moving forward.

I have been overwhelmed by the good will of strangers who have given up their own time to help with this forthcoming charity event. To give you a few examples,our local Police Community Support Officers will be helping with traffic, I have a terrific volunteer - Matthew Pearce - who is going to co-ordinate the whole parking nightmare, good friends have stood shivering in the rain and snow to erect signs, the venue is letting us stalk them by way of phone calls, emails and numerous visits and children from my own school, Bucklers Mead Community School in Yeovil have been giving up their lunch times to make ID badges, sort out a stall and hand out leaflets.

So whilst immersed in the glow of altruism, I received a call from the District Council, telling me that if I did not take all my roadside signs down, I would be fined £80 a sign. In the interests of highways safety, we were told, we would be liable if someone had an accident because they were looking at our sign. However, if the signs were a few feet back on private land that would be perfectly ok! Work that one out!

I am not a woman who likes confrontation, but when I have gone to the trouble of gaining permission by one department, to then be told I would be fined by another, I did start to acquire a Hulkesque like visage and well, I cried. There, I've said it. First Bugfest tears of the season. There had to be some, somewhere along the line.
So I rang one person, who said talk to another, who said to ring the other person back. By this time, I'd had enough and my long suffering hubby had to take over the mantle of Bugfest organiser for about 20 minutes. The upshot is, the lovely signs have to go, so we are investigating private land use!

On a more positive note, we are gaining attention from great stall holders so on the day, expect to see tarantulas, stick insects, mantids, barn owls, Dr Who memorabilia and merchandise. Even the little people have got facepainting, dalek colouring, wee toys, fimo bug making, decorating ceramic tiles and a visit from Captain Jack Sparrow from 'Pirates'. On the Doctor who front, we have full sized Daleks, a cyberman, scarecrow and a Bugfest Doctor! And, did I mention there will be a ruddy great life sized TARDIS out the front?

So if that grabs your goat, come to the Bug spectacular of the Year on 21st February at Stanchester school,TA14 6UG Yeovil. CFZ readers can get cheaper tickets online if they follow this link (£10 for a family instead of £14..)www.bugfest.co.uk/flyerdiscount.htm.
If you would like more information, then please email me on Kara@bugfest.co.uk. I hope to meet you there. I'll be the green, stressed out woman hiding in the TARDIS!

WHY WE HAVE TRANSFORMED `EXOTIC PETS` MAGAZINE INTO `THE AMATEUR NATURALIST` MAGAZINE

Yesterday we announced that there was a big change at CFZ Press. I wrote:

"18 months ago we started a magazine called Exotic Pets which did basically what it said on the tin, and covered ummmm exotic pets really. It has been a moderate success, but for a number of different reasons we have decided to knock it on the head. However, don't be distraught, because the magazine will live on albeit under a different name.

As of issue seven which (I sincerely hope) will go to press midweek, the periodical will be called The Amateur Naturalist."

We have had several people contact me to ask for further explanations of what this is all about, so I have decided to publish - ahead of its inclusion in the magazine - my editorial...


Dear friends,

What a peculiar year 2009 is turning out to be. Everything seems to be changing.

We are in the midst of what we are reliably informed is the worst financial crisis in living memory, but at Christmas the shops were full of people spending money like sailors on shore leave.

Frighteningly, a lot of what they were spending money on was livestock, and much of that livestock was exotic.

A few days before Christmas, I was in a Barnstaple pet shop that shall remain nameless, because it's not their fault, and anyway that is where we buy a lot of our animal supplies each month, and I would hate to be banned from there.

However, back to the story.

I was pootling around by the wild bird food trying to find some softbill mix that would tempt the jaded appetites of our pet crested mynah, and jackdaw, when I heard the most appalling dialogue that I have ever heard in a pet shop. I don't usually make a habit of listening to other people's conversations, but I am particularly fond of our colony of African stiped mice, and once I heard somebody else - albeit somebody of the female gender, dolled up to the nines in a revolting Christmas elf costume that was obviously meant to be sexy, but sadly gave the completely opposite impression - mention the species, I completely unethically pricked up my ears. She was haranguing the poor beleaguered shop assistant about the animals she had seen, and more importantly, the animals she wanted to buy her family, and her poor unfortunate boyfriend for Christmas. "I saw some African striped mice the other day" she shrieked frenetically. "They were cute, but I didn't like the colour. Can you get them for me in black and white?"

I so wanted to pick up one of the long tubes of fat-based wild bird food that was displayed fetchingly on the display stand next to me, and beat her severely around the head and neck, whilst screaming that the colours of wild animals are a matter of thousands of years of evolution, and that the only reason one should keep them as pets is to glorify in the magnificence of the natural world. However, it would not have been the act of a gentleman, and I didn’t want to get arrested, so I kept my council. It was not until some weeks later that I came to the uncomfortable realisation that if there was enough of a free-market demand for zebra-striped black and white African grass mice then some venture capitalist would probably invest in the genetic engineering mechanism needed to create them.

Sadly, I have seen a lot of things like this in the last year or so. Being the editor of a magazine like this makes you, well it makes me anyway, re-evaluate one's moral stance upon the pet keeping industry. We are no longer involved with the Somerset zoo. I do not want to go into details, but sufficient to say that once again we were forced to re-evaluate our position on a number of issues.

Now, don't get me wrong. I have not become one of the anti-pet keeping lobby, or the anti-zoo lobby, but I believe that it is time for us all, whether private collectors, or zoo keepers to re-evaluate why we keep exotic animals. I have been visiting zoos now for more than four and a half decades. My first word was `zoo` according to my dear departed mother, but Gerald Durrell's mother is also supposed to have claimed that, and I have always suspected that my Mama lifted that eminently quotable line from one of Durrell's books.

The first English zoo that I remember was a long defunct collection in Southampton in 1963, but before that my mother, and the two Chinese women who brought me up used to take me, in my pushchair, to the Hong Kong Botanical Gardens, which was a particularly sordid little collection during the early 1960s, where I would gaze with delight at the rather dishevelled Celebes apes (as they were called in those days), the Chinese water monitor, and a cage of rather bedraggled coatis (one which had a tail missing).

However, I adored the place and have been an avid zoo-goer ever since. I have also kept exotic, or at least unusual, pets since I was about six years old when my first zoological collection consisted of a Chinese praying mantis, and a pair of hummingbird hawkmoth caterpillars in jam jars on my bedroom window. Hong Kong was a great place to grow up when your heart was set on the natural world.
However, even from my earliest days I have seen my forays into Nature Study, both in zoos, and in the countryside, and even - let me stress - in jam jars on my windowsill as a spiritual thing; worshipping at the altar of Mother Nature if you will.

And this is where I think we as a community of pet keepers, and zoo goers have gone wrong. For too many people this communion with the natural world has become a mere hobby, or worse a minor lifestyle choice.

Now, we may be committing commercial suicide by changing horses in midstream and transforming what was a relatively successful magazine about exotic pet-keeping into a quarterly journal of radical Natural History, but it was never about the money in the first place. The whole concept of the magazine was to encourage responsible pet-keeping, and to promote the concept of exotic animal husbandry as a part of the study of Natural History, rather than as a fatuous hobby which essentially doesn’t go anywhere.

So, in essence nothing has changed. It is still the same magazine that it always has been, except now it is over twenty pages bigger, and we hope better. The title `Exotic Pets` never really sat well with me, and I am glad that we have nailed our colours to the mast with this new re-branding.

We made the decision to change from an A4 magazine format to a perfect bound book one for several reasons. We were printing and manufacturing Exotic Pets ourselves, and the task was really too much for us. The overheads were unbearable, and it took such a long time to produce that the whole house got taken over for three nerve-juddering weeks at a time. But the other reason is that these books are more durable; they can be put onto bookshelves like proper books and not left to get crumpled and tatty like magazines, because this a periodical that I think you will want to keep to read again and again, rather than just read once and chuck away.

So welcome to a new, radicalised periodical. We believe that unless we can put our own house in order, then the well-meaning but ultimately misguided folk of the Animal Rights lobby will win, and in twenty years time there will be no exotic pet-keeping (in the UK at least) and every zoo will be exactly the same. No-one will roam the countryside, and children will only see animals as two-dimensional avatars on the screens of their video-games consoles, and that will be a crying shame.

Natural History is no longer seen as a suitable hobby for young people, but in many cases is now an illegal one. A colleague of mine who works for the BBC Natural History Unit told me that children making a documentary on pond dipping were forced to wear safety helmets and rubber gloves before they were allowed near a garden pond. It is now illegal to take frogspawn from your own garden pond and put it in a fishtank.

Changing social mores have meant that most of the children of people I know sit indoors all day playing computer games rather than exploring what little countryside is left. This may seem trivial to you, but Darwin, Linneaus, Mendel, and Gerald Durrell, amongst many others, were amateur naturalists first and foremost. Most professional zoologists started off as amateur naturalists. If kids are no longer able, or encouraged, to do this is it any wonder most of them seem to want to grow up to be image consultants or TV presenters?

We are not condemning the Animal Rights movement. Indeed, during my re-examination of our motives for doing what we do which has taken up much of the last three months, I realised that my attitude towards the people who want to ban exotic pet-keeping, and the people who want to close down zoos has been clouded by the fact that I adore zoos, and have kept what could loosely be described as exotic pets for over forty years.

However, if I am to be honest about it, I have been viewing both lots of pressure groups through my own “filter” of being an exotic pet-keeper who likes to go to zoos. However in the eighteen months or so since I started this magazine (under its previous moniker) I have been travelling around zoos and pet shows, as a journalist rather than as a punter, and whilst I have seen many outstanding and morally uplifting things, other things that I have seen are more than slightly disturbing.

Too many zoos that I have seen in recent months have been tourist attractions first, and centres of zoological excellence not even second. I am not naïve, nor am I stupid. I realise the commercial constraints under which zoos have to operate, and I also realise that tacky tourist rubbish makes money, but I am becoming more and more uneasy about the philosophical implications of a zoo where the animals are secondary to selling overpriced rubbish to the great unwashed. I can see why the people who wish to have zoos closed down say that such places are philosophically unsound, because by their very nature they are not treating animals with the respect that they are due. And when I see animals being treated as secondary to facepainting, circus skills workshops, and garish, noisy rides, I have to agree.

Too many exotic pet shops, and even shows that I have seen in recent months suffer from a similar malaise. They operate on a sensationalist basis, selling things that look imposing to people who are easily impressed by such matters, whether or not they have any likelihood of being able to successfully look after the poor bloody creatures. I have seen so-called specialist shops where animals are kept under completely inadequate conditions, and sold without even the most basic attempt at giving any help to the prospective buyer. One wonders how many of these poor bloody creatures are going to survive for any length of time. This, too gives plenty of grist to the mill of the people who wish to have the sale of all exotic animals banned.

So, does this mean that I have turned my back on my mindset of the past forty years and have joined the Animal Rights brigade. No, of course not. Just because I understand, and in many cases sympathise with, their grievances, and accept that there is a very real problem, does not mean that I agree with their proposed solutions.

For about a hundred years from the mid 19th Century, Natural History was the most popular hobby for people of all ages, in Britain and her Empire. And as I wrote earlier, the great names of zoology and conservation of the 19th and 20th Century were nearly all, originally at least, amateur naturalists, and some - like Gerald Durrell, for example - never attained conventional scientific qualifications. Darwin, as you will read elsewhere in this issue, in an article to mark the bicentennial of his birth, flunked his medical training, took a degree with the intention of becoming a parson, and then became the greatest zoologist of the last 200 years, without a formal zoological qualification in sight, and even I have no zoological qualifications apart from a not very good `O Level` from 1976.

I can imagine a world without the next generation of Jon Downeses in it, but a world without a 21st Century Darwin, Mendel, Linnaeus, or Durrell. That would be unthinkable.

And that is what I believe will happen if our increasingly urbanised and sedentary population are not encouraged to take an active, rather than a passive, interest in the natural world. And this is exactly what I believe will happen if Exotic Petkeeping, and zoos with anything like an appropriate agenda do not continue in this country. And, unless we as a community regulate and police ourselves this is exactly what is going to happen.

It is time not only for a resurgence in the somewhat neglected occupation of the Amateur Naturalist, but it is time for the emergence of the Radical Naturalist. It is time to take a stand against the manifest stupidities and injustices which beset us at every turn. It is time to insist that those who want to keep exotic animals do so for the right reasons; in order to study their behaviour and habits, and to in their own little way add to the sum total of human knowledge. It is time to insist that zoos, petkeepers, and those who - like us - are part of the petkeeping industry treat the animals with which we deal with the respect and awe that they deserve. It is time that we stop treating the Animal Rights extremists as the unquestioned enemy and try to establish a dialogue with them, because although their methodology and beliefs are different to ours, their ultimate intention - to treat the other denizens of the world in which we live with respect and dignity - is the same. And it is time to realise that if we don’t take a stand, and furthermore, take a stand now, then the way of life that we hold dear will not exist for much longer!

I promise that I will not always write editorials of such enormous length, but the changes in this periodical needed to be explained properly, before we can all go further.

Onwards and Upwards,

Jon Downes
Editor, The Amateur Naturalist
North Devon,
February 7th 2009

ROLL OVER `EXOTIC PETS` AND TELL `THE AMATEUR NATURALIST` THE NEWS

18 months ago we started a magazine called Exotic Pets which did basically what it said on the tin, and covered ummmm exotic pets really. It has been a moderate success, but for a number of different reasons we have decided to knock it on the head.

However, don't be distraught, because the magazine will live on albeit under a different name. As of issue seven which (I sincerely hope) will go to press on tuesday, the periodical will be called The Amateur Naturalist.

To put our reasoning in a nutshell, as far as we are concerned the keeping of exotic animals as pets is only ethical if done in a spirit of investigation, and so rather than publishing a magazine which could be interpreted as merely encouraging people to keep such animals for their novelty value, we are now nailing our ethical colours to the mast.

However we are delighted to be able to announce that the production values are going to be considerably higher. It will no longer be printed in-house but will be manufactured - like our books - by those jolly nice folks at LightningSource. It will be substantially longer (at about 100pp rather than 60pp) and although there will be a small price hike this will not effect current subscribers.

And, as we announced with Animals & Men last week, it will be available in two different formats. A perfect bound paperback, and a pdf download (people who buy the former automatically get a free copy of the latter).

So, all good news then I think

GUEST BLOGGER KARA WADHAM: The Bugfest Blog

Bugfest SW-Carnival of Monsters 21st February 2009 Stanchester School TA19 6UG 10.30am

Today I have found myself with an unexpected day at home because of the snow, so after a snow ball fight, watching Nick and the children (but mostly Nick) build a snow dalek (pictured), I found I had a little time to catch up on Bugfest preparations.

Organising Bugfest is a little like cooking a roast dinner- lots of components to bring together at the same time, which means being very organised, multi-tasking, pre empting the unimaginable and gorging yourself when it's all done ( or is that just me?). I have had to learn the art of how to twist people's arms in all sorts of devious ways. Being a woman, deviousness, as you will know, is not a natually occuring facet of mine, but in the name of Bugfest and the children's hospice we are supporting, I'll do anything (well almost).

We are very fortunate to have a cohort of charity daleks, a clockwork robot, a scarecrow and 'Bugfest' doctors adding to the visitor experience this year. This, in addition to our regular and esteemed traders; Exotic pets magazine, Tarantula Barn, Mendip Monsters, Curtis Lakin, The Phasmid Study Group as well as other new traders, and a well known Sci-fi trader; should prove a great mix of mayhem and monsters. Bugfest are also urging visitors, especially children to join in the fun and come in sci-fi fancy dress or Bug attire.

With only two weeks to go visitors are being urged to buy advance tickets . For Blog readers, there is a special discounted 'hidden' website page which allows you to buy cheaper tickets. ( eg. £10 for family instead of £14). Don't leave it too late. If it's busy on the day, you may not get in!

www.bugfest.co.uk/flyerdiscount.htm

I may be able to multi-task but I am not cooking roast dinners for 100's of disgruntled guests!

Sad News: SIMON WOLSTENCROFT is dead

I am sad to hear that Simon Wolstencroft has died, because for many years we were very close friends.

I am certain that everyone reading this will know that there was bad blood between us at the end, and that there had been for several years, and I feel that it would be completely hypocritical of me to pretend that this never happened. Iggy Tavares, bless him, had tried to mend the rift on several occassions, but it was too deep and too fundamental, and - given the circumstances - was never going to be fixed. But I wanted to mark his passing, and remember the kind, funny, gentle, irreverent, and sweet man who was my friend for five or six years, before the illness took control..

When he was at his peak, he was the best editor that I ever had, and I learned a lot about the editor's craft from him. After he and I parted company I missed him a lot, and always hoped that somehow we would become friends again, although I knew that this was never going to happen. I still miss him, and my heart goes out to Debbie at this sad time.

Cheers old mate... Jon

Unknown animals in the pet trade? Surely not...

GUEST BLOGGER MAX BLAKE

In the last year we have met a number of frighteningly intelligent young people who look certain to overwhelm the CFZ over the next few years. One of the youngest, and most frighteningly intelligent is Max Blake, who is the youngest speaker at the forthcoming Weird Weekend. He will be talking on the subject of how unknown animals, smaller ones at least, sometimes turn up in the pet trade. As a taster, and as the first in what will be a series of guest bloggers, he has written us a short article on this little known and fascinating subject...

Bernard Heuvelmans has been oft quoted as saying 'There are lost worlds everywhere' to show his belief that new animals can turn up in the most unexpected of places, but undescribed animals sat in a small cage stacked under dozens of others in the corner of someone’s room? It sounds like we are beginning to take this quote a little too far...

However, in the last few years a surprising number of animals have turned up in the pet trade. In-country collectors often grab what ever interesting animals they can (for instance) for the exotic invertebrates trade. They often come across new species to science, although very often the collectors have known about them for ages, and by the time hobbyists such as myself get hold of them someone has usually identified them to genus level and we can make a pretty good inference about their captive care. These are usually common and easily kept species like cockroaches (indeed, at the time of writing, a German friend of mine is keeping about a dozen species of cockroach which have no scientific name), but quite often larger more impressive animals like scorpions and giant centipedes.

These two cockroaches are known to family level only. The species with the white markings on its head comes from Sri-Lanka, and the other species, the well known African Bullet Roach, comes from Africa, but no-one knows for certain where. There is a rumor that the originals came from the slopes of a volcano, but its name eludes me.

The scorpion is from Tanzania, and is known to genus level (Pandinus). It may well turn out to be a colour morph of a previously described species, probably smithi. The centipede is also from Tanzania, and is again onlyknown to genus level (Scolopendra).

THE STORY OF `CUDDLES`

The case of Cuddles is one of the best. A bottom dwelling shark, she was bought in by a pet shop, sold to an animal rescue centre, taken to a zoo for two years before being moved, again, to an aquarium where she was, finally, exhibited in an aquarium and viewed from the side by someone with knowledge on sharks who “realised she was special”. She is about 700mm long, covered in bristles which are themselves covered in red algae and who moves more like a hopping frogfish than a shark. Shark experts who have examined her say she is not a known species, and appears to be adapted for an existence in deep caves. Her irises are permanently open, suggesting a permanently dark environment, with very wide nostrils and, most interestingly of all, a fifth gill. This is used as a plankton sieve, and you will know about other plankton eating sharks such as the huge whale, megamouth and basking sharks, but this is a plankton eating shark with a difference. It can easily alter its diet to large food items such as fish or benthonic invertebrates.

Some other plankton eating sharks have been known to eat large food items to supplement their diet, but Cuddles seems to do this with much, much greater regularity than any other plankton eating shark. I can find no reference to her scientific name on the internet; however a writer for a well known diving magazine has stated that Cuddles has already been described as Pseudoginglymostoma brevicaudatum, a small species of nurse shark and, according to him, “the dozy creature was transformed, overnight, into a freak of nature” by the media.

Seeing as this is the only reference I could find to this sharks current name and that no-one else has commented on any articles saying what Cuddles really is, this writer’s statement must be taken with a pinch of rather potent salt. The mystery, it appears, still lingers. For something to do in the mean time, you can visit Cuddles in the Sea Star aquarium, in Coburg, Germany.

MORE QUASI-CRYPTIC FISHES FROM MAX...

The "new danio" is currently undiscribed and was found by aquarists in India who saw it for sale in a couple of shops. It is known to be a Cryprinid.



Celestichthys margaritatus is a funny little fish. It is certainly a Cryprinid, and was originally called a Galaxy rasbora. This worked for a year or so, but then, someone who appears to have no grounding in scientific research, desided to say on a large aquarist forum that it is not a rasbora, and was a danio. He then called it a celestial pearl danio, and so, pretty much becuase this is a stunning photo and the people that kept it were the sort of people who much have everything correct and proper, called it this new name on pretty much no evidence for it being so. Why this species' common name was changed so rapidly because it wasn't "right", and yet Labeo sharks are still called sharks because of their resembalence, I will never know. Anyway, so someone had a quick look at the fish, and described it Celestichthys margaritatus. By this point its numbers were running down in the wild due to over colecting. Now, there is pretty much a straight export ban for this species, and captive breeding efforts are underway to keep it in culture. However, new evidence has been cited for this species being a Danio species, and we may see its genus being changed.

Max will be appearing on stage at the Weird Weekend this year talking about this very subject, and we are hoping to have some of these currently unknown creatures on display. He will also be featured on RadioCFZ within the next few days. So watch this space....