If you were reading the blog yesterday you probably read about the stillborn caecilian I found yesterday. Well, as I predicted in that blog there is a part two to that story and this time it has a much happier ending.This morning (which I should mention is Sunday morning as you’ll be reading this at a later date than the one I’m writing it on) Helios Seven and I were doing the animal round when I decided to check the caecilian tank to see if there were any more babies present in addition to the stillborn one I found yesterday. Sure enough, I spied a discarded yolk sack dangling from a plant.
This meant that there was definitely at least one more baby caecilian in the tank now and that it had been born alive in order for it to remove the yolk sack; indeed, it was very likely it would still be alive now and having got through the first difficult hours, be likely to live a long a fruitful life.
“Well,” I said to Seven, “It looks like I have managed to get caecilians to successfully breed, what do you think about that?”
“Mew.” Replied the cat in an uninterested manner as the comment hadn’t mentioned anything about feeding her.
I then looked out a faunarium (other fauna boxes are available) and put some warm water in it from the tank and looked for the baby so that I could put it in the small plastic tank for a few minutes to inspect and photograph it. And, yes: there it was.
I then showed Jon our new arrival, and he was considerably more impressed than the cat and is a happy bunny indeed. There is also the possibility that there are still yet more babies on the way as the female still looks like she may have more babies inside her. As caecilians are no longer imported for the pet trade the more that are captive-bred in the UK the better as their keepers will be able to exchange some offspring with other keepers to improve genetic diversity and stop captive populations turning into feeble and deformed specimens from in-breeding. Of course with only one baby at present we are a long way off from being able to do any swaps to improve future genetic diversity of captive caecilians but hopefully in the future this will be a possibility.
I then looked out a faunarium (other fauna boxes are available) and put some warm water in it from the tank and looked for the baby so that I could put it in the small plastic tank for a few minutes to inspect and photograph it. And, yes: there it was.
I then showed Jon our new arrival, and he was considerably more impressed than the cat and is a happy bunny indeed. There is also the possibility that there are still yet more babies on the way as the female still looks like she may have more babies inside her. As caecilians are no longer imported for the pet trade the more that are captive-bred in the UK the better as their keepers will be able to exchange some offspring with other keepers to improve genetic diversity and stop captive populations turning into feeble and deformed specimens from in-breeding. Of course with only one baby at present we are a long way off from being able to do any swaps to improve future genetic diversity of captive caecilians but hopefully in the future this will be a possibility.
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