MERRY CHRISTMAS from the Christmas Gecko

MERRY CHRISTMAS

to everyone.

I have posted these few photographs on my blog as my Christmas Special.

The Christmas Gecko.

My pet house gecko is happy with his huge present I gave him.

As you can see that he is smiling happily in front of the camera.

He is even thrilled when he found out that I have prepared a home-made Santa hat for him.

The hat isn't well-made because my fingers are just too big to do something that small.
You can see those bits of sellotape pieces sticking out of his hat.
The hat is not perfect but he accepted it with with love because he knew that it was from my heart.

Just joking, it is not really my pet lizard.
It is a real gecko, not a fake one, but a dead one.
Since it is dead, I have decided to decorate it, give it some props and make it pose in front of my camera.
It's mouth was closed so I have to open it up so that it looks like he is happier.

The gift in the first photo was just something I removed from my small-sized decorated Christmas tree.

It's hat is made myself from papers.

The Christmas greeting plastic words with a missing "s" is taken from my mum's birthday cake.

It died just minutes before this photographs are taken.

Don't get me wrong, I did not kill it.

I found it paralyzed on my house floor, dying of unknown disease.

It is still too young to die of old age as it has not yet reached it's maximum size.

By the time I was studying his cause of death, it has stopped breathing.

This idea of making him my Christmas character came when I can't identify it's cause of death.

An ordinary gecko has passed away and became the CHRISTMAS GECKO, pretty scary but creative.

  

Spiders Reference Websites

AUSTRALIAN SPIDERS

A website created as a working draft for A field guide to Spiders of Australia by Robert Whyte and Dr Greg Anderson due to be published in 2014.

Spiders of Australia finally have their own website.

I can now use this website as a guide reference to help me identify Australian spiders.

Take a look at the website here in the link

http://www.arachne.org.au/default.asp
For spiders of Quensland - http://www.findaspider.org.au/find/common.htm
If you are only looking for the Jumping Spiders (Salticidae) of Australia, I suggest you visit  http://ednieuw.home.xs4all.nl/australian/salticidae/Salticidae.html

INDIAN SPIDERS

A website has been created to record the spider species of Southern India.
http://www.southindianspiders.org/south-indian-spiders.htm
As for Central India, there is also a website with checklists of the spiders in Melghat and Lonar Crater.
http://www.spidersofcentralindia.com/

Nanda Devi, located on the border between India and China, has it's spiders recorded and published http://www2.wii.gov.in/publications/researchreports/2011/diversity_spiders_nanda_devi.pdf Dr. Sunil Jose has also created a index page with links to his blogs about specific group of spiders he recorded. http://indian-spiders.blogspot.in/

SINGAPOREAN SPIDERS

Singapore might not have many spider species compared to other countries but there are lot of spider photographs uploaded into the Internet from Singapore.

Some species are endemic to Singapore only because Singapore is an island.

So I need some spider species guide as a reference to identify many spiders of Singapore that we don't have here in Malaysia.

http://habitatnews.nus.edu.sg/guidebooks/spiders/text/a-spiders.htm
http://sgwildanimals.blogspot.com/2012/10/spiders.html
http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/rbz/biblio/50/50rbz359-388.pdf
http://www.natureloveyou.sg/Minibeast-Spider/Family%20All.html

NORTH AMERICAN SPIDERS

North America is a large continent that that holds a lot of spider species

I found this online North American spider identification guide.

It can be very useful for me to identify the spiders there.

http://www.cirrusimage.com/spider.htm
Bugguide is a popular American insect-identification website.
Fortunately, spiders are also included in this website.
http://bugguide.net/node/view/1954/bgpage

EUROPEAN SPIDERS

Europe is located between Africa and Asia with Russia, so it might contains a lot of spider species from these 3 great continents.

This website shows the spiders of NW Europe.

http://ednieuw.home.xs4all.nl/Spiders/spidhome.htm
As for French Jumping Spider, you can visit this link.
http://yvanmontardi.perso.sfr.fr/salticidae/index_e.html

JAPANESE SPIDERS

As one of the most modern country in technology and science, Japan should be able to identify and record most of the species of spiders there so I trust the spider website of of Japan.

http://www.cyberoz.net/city/sekine/zukax00.htm

GUYANA SPIDERS
A French website displaying a collection of spiders photographed mostly by Olivier Baudry and Sophie from Guyana, a country in South America.
http://olivierbaudry.free.fr/BOA1.html

SOUTH ASIAN SPIDERS
As for spider species from rice land in South and Southeast Asia, here is a reference book written by A.T. Barrion and J.A. Litsinger  
http://books.google.com.my/books?id=5dhYexpLc6QC&pg=PA553&lpg=PA553&dq=Gasteracantha+janopol&source=bl&ots=oUELKVVkN5&sig=Nv2oO7TWXJi9MTHrpj0GnPrJSbU&hl=en#v=onepage&q=Gasteracantha%20janopol&f=false
A checklist of the spiders of South Asia.
http://www.zoosprint.org/zooprintjournal/2007/february/2551-2597.pdf
Spiders of the Malay Archipelago.
http://arthropodaselecta.britishspiders.org.uk/articles/21_1_029_060_Proszynski.pdf


INDONESIAN SPIDERS
Indonesia is a large country compromising several main islands and thousands of other smaller islands. Many species of endemic spiders are found in that country but many more are yet to be discovered. Here is a link to the species discovered from Indonesia.
http://www.cacaospiders.com/IndonesianSpiders_2011.pdf


PENINSULAR (WEST) MALAYSIAn SPIDERS
A checklist of West Malaysia's spiders here in http://rmbr.nus.edu.sg/rbz/biblio/57/57rbz305-322.pdf

CATS & DOGS

Dogs and cats are always known as natural enemies.
In the televisions, Internet, stories, cats and dogs seldom cope well with each other and are always fighting.
I know that this is shown commonly in Cats and Dogs, Tom and Jerry.......
I do not agree that cats and dogs are NATURAL ENEMIES !
Yesterday, while eating in a local Chinese restaurant, I saw a hungry street cat and a starving stray dog begging for foods together from outside the restaurant.
2 years ago, I saw a young adult puppy and a cat sleeping peacefully and comfortably with each other placing their heads together.
These are some proofs that cats and dogs are not enemies naturally.
But what about the dogs and cats that are seen fighting.
I think humans are responsible for those.
I believe that dogs reared by humans are aggressive towards other animals more than stray urban dogs.
This is because the dogs owned by people have become fierce to guard their master's house.
So naturally, the cats in the neighborhoods are always been barked by the dogs and naturally develops the hatred for dogs.
So if a tamed dog who lived with their master without other animal species has a chance to go out from their owner's house, they will chase smaller animals (usually cats) that they saw.
As for stray dogs, once, one came into the neighborhood and saw a tame cat.
The tame cat who has lived a life in fear of the neighbour's dogs switched itself into defence mode and started to meow aggressively with it's fur all upright.
The stray dog however, showed no interest in the cat and continued it's mission to find garbage foods while still being confronted by the fierce cat.
Who says that Cats and Dogs are natural enemies?
I know that many of them says that, believed that, but I am not convinced.