Jonathan's Jungle Roadshow

This is Messi, my fabulous adult male Chaco golden knee tarantula from Argentina, who has been wowing children at two different primary schools in Swindon today following his namesake's brilliant hat-trick against Algeria in the early hours of this morning! Anyone who has met my Messi over the years will know how lovely a spider he truly is. Apologies to any non-football fans reading this but I'm absolutely loving the World Cup, as always - I'm now looking forward to England getting started with a win against Croatia this evening! ⚽️

Evening all. I recently acquired a new baby snake and this one is very special, as I've never owned a smaller individual in more than 40yrs as a snake keeper! This is Valentina, a tiny female tricolour hognose snake who hatched on Valentine's Day this year (hence the name!) and on the day I collected her she weighed just 5.9g. My previous smallest-ever snake was Pixel the speckled king snake (who turned 12 three weeks ago today) - he was 7.7g when I bought him back in the summer of 2014! Valentina is tiny, absolutely beautiful, feeding brilliantly on baby mice and she shed her skin perfectly just yesterday. I'm very much looking forward to watching her grow in the coming months! 😍

Pinocchio, my beautiful and ever-popular rhinoceros rat snake (aka green unicorn, aka Vietnamese longnose snake) is 14 years old today! Here he is pictured just yesterday with his new birthday buddy Jaxon, whose 8th birthday party I attended along with Pinocchio and a few other animal friends. A very happy birthday to Jaxon for today as well! 🎂

Today is the 12th birthday of Pixel, my beautiful speckled king snake. Here he is this afternoon with my lovely niece Lily, who has been in Swindon for some family time this Bank Holiday weekend!

Today is the first birthday of this beautiful crested gecko. She's the only female I kept out of the babies I hatched here last year and she's named Apricot due to her intense orange colouration. These images don't really do her justice as she's even more vibrant in the flesh! The final picture is how she looked on this day last year, just hours after hatching. Quite a change in twelve months! 😁

A very happy 100th birthday to national treasure Sir David Attenborough! He's been an absolute inspiration for such a long time and deserves to be celebrated worldwide. I had the absolute privilege of being in the same room as him once, back in 2011, when I had a front row seat for his brilliant keynote speech at the Association for Science Education's annual conference, where I was promoting JJR. I'm off to two different independent schools today, where they're celebrating his life's work by meeting some of my wonderful animals! 🐍🦎🕷🦂🦗

This week I acquired a small group of stunning grasshopper nymphs. These are juveniles of a species known as Tropidacris cristata, aka the red-winged grasshopper, which are found in Central and South America. As nymphs they have this incredible warning colouration, whereas as adults they are less vibrant (whilst still very colourful) but with distinctive red wings. With a maximum wingspan of well over 20cm, they are one of the largest species of grasshopper in the world! I am very much looking forward to seeing these grow and change in the months ahead. 🦗

My favourite crested gecko that hatched here in 2025 has turned a year old today. He's now known as Pongo Jr because he really takes after his Dad in terms of dalmatian spots! A truly gorgeous gecko. The last picture is how he looked on this day last year - very different in terms of size, colouration and level of spotting! 🦎

So yesterday I hit a cool milestone - my 850th birthday party since starting JJR! It was for a lovely 6yr old boy named Bryn and he and his family & friends thoroughly enjoyed meeting a lovely selection of my animals. 😁

I'm absolutely delighted to have Emperor scorpions (Pandinus imperator) back in my collection again, after quite a few years without them. I stupidly sold all of the scorplings from my last couple of times successfully breeding the species, then lost my adults before they produced any more. These two fabulous juveniles, which I only acquired very recently, were bred by the brilliant Tim Baxter just Scorpions up in Hull and I've just realised that yesterday was their second birthday. I'm very much looking forward to seeing these two grow and change in the months and years ahead. 🦂👍🏻