We trust 2017 has been good for you and wish everyone the very best for whatever 2018 would bring.

Personally, as well as a few days off over the holidays, tidying up the garden and giving the snakes a good feed, I am looking forward to an exciting year ahead.

Strepsiptera or stylops are tiny twisted-wing parasites. Females have no wings or legs; they bury their bodies inside a host such as a bee with just the genital opening exposed to await a male. She only mates once and afterwards can produce between 1,000 and 750,000 larvae that crawl or hop away looking for another host.

Juvenile females have legs only until they find and burrow into a host; the legs are lost during a subsequent moult.

The male, meanwhile, flies about looking for a female to mate with. He only lives for around 6 hours! Once mated he dies and after the female’s larvae emerge from her protruding birth canal she dies as well.

Apparently none of this damages the poor host bee, cricket, bug, roach or similar species that are affected by them. Strange creatures - Stylops make ticks seem rather cute and cuddly in comparison.

Go to shop.animalark.com.au

Valid for purchases and bookings taken and paid for during January 2018 for the whole of 2018 – just call or email and mention Newsletter 45 for the discount.

So tightly do the babies cling together on mums back that I cannot count them as yet.

As you can see from the images these babies do not fluoresce under UV light. Over the next 2/3 weeks their exoskeleton hardens and they then become independent of their mother and will begin to fluoresce.

No one knows quite why this fluorescence occurs but they do know how it happens! There are molecules in the exoskeleton that absorb and re-emit UV as visible light.

A UV torch is best to see this at night but it can occur naturally under the light of a full moon. By the way, we sell UV torches on the Animal Ark shop.

We are lucky enough to get quite regular emails and texts from people who have seen the training working for them and their dogs. One story this spring was from someone who called up to book her 2 Labradors in for the training.

A snake had just passed through her property – her dogs were showing an unhealthy interest but she managed to call them away – and she watched the snake go in to the neighbour’s yard.

She then witnessed the neighbours two Labradors take one look at the snake and run away!!! She asked how come they had such great aversion behaviour and was told that they had completed Animal Ark’s snake avoidance training a few months earlier.

Their mother and father matured and started laying eggs months ago before dying of old age having made it to 14 months. I have at least a dozen or so new mouths to feed. They are quite easy on a diet of gum leaves.

Late summer is the time that baby snakes emerge. From the bellies of Tiger snakes, Death adders and even the lesser-known Bardick, live snakes are born. The Tiger snake alone can have between 10 and 64 live young.

From Dugites, King Browns and Pythons, the juvenile snakes hatch out of eggs laid a couple of months ago. Pythons coil around to protect and even heat the eggs whereas Dugites bury and leave them to incubate on their own.

How unlucky you may think. Well maybe not, apparently it was only because of the scheduled training appointment that Hunter’s owner went home early to collect the dog to discover the incident had occurred.

If Hunter hadn’t been booked in no one would have been home until much later when Hunter would probably have succumbed to the venom.

Most deadly of all is the Golden Poison Frog Phyllobates terribilis, which roughly translates to ‘leaf climbing terrible frog’. This terrible frog is at 4.5cm large compared with other related species that average at around 2cm. From a single individual enough toxins can be found to kill 20,000 mice or 10 humans. Surprisingly in captivity the toxins in wild caught specimens fade away and captive bred specimens lack them entirely. The toxins are obtained by the wild diet of beetles and ants. These very attractive little frogs may be kept as pets and thrive in humidity levels of 80% - 90%.

A variety of toxins and alkaloids are secreted from glands found under the moist skin. Of these one is particularly well studied. Batrachotoxin is an extremely potent cardiotoxic and neurotoxic steroidal alkaloid also found in melyrid beetles and even some birds.

Poison arrow frogs tend to live on the ground and the understory of moist rainforest type habitats. They lay several eggs, that hatch into tadpoles, that are then cared for with great attention by the parents. The tadpoles can climb onto the frogs back and may be transported around the lush habitat to small bodies of fresh water such as those found in bromeliads and other plants, flowers and forest floor litter. Some even feed the developing tadpoles unfertilised eggs to give them a nutritional boost.

• Life span from 12-20 years
• Size from 2-4.5cm
• Diet small invertebrates such as springtails, ants and beetles