ANOTHER BABY CAECILIAN?

Oliver has found what looks like another yolk sack in the caecilian tank. Have we got another baby? If so, it is hiding but there are plenty of places to hide.

OLL LEWIS: The Caecilian Mafia Adds To Its Ranks

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.

OLL LEWIS: Caecilians Making Love in the Afternoon

As regular readers might know, one of my duties at the CFZ is looking after our menagerie of animals. For the most part this includes my morning rounds when I check on the animals and give them their morning feeds, or daily feeds should they only require fresh food to be administered to them once a day. Typically this takes somewhere between one and two hours each day depending on just how much attention the more intelligent animals like the rabbits and the pheasant want, and the health of the animals. I’m aided in this endeavour by my assistant Helios Seven, who, like most cats, believes that if she doesn’t remind me constantly I may forget to feed her for the first time ever in the five or so years I’ve known her.

Anyway, while I was checking on the caecilian tank on Saturday I noticed something unusual lying motionless atop the gravel.

“My, that’s a big worm.” I exclaimed.
“Mew,” said Helios in reply.