The realm of my corn snake. 🐍🌿
I've attached the water bowl with a branch. Now a cute little mushroom has grown out of the branch. 🍄🙃

😂 When I waited in Santa Teresa for the bus to Cusco, I met a Swede. He was in transit and brought some rapé from the Brazilian Amazon. He couldn't tell me exactly what's in it. Tobacco and other plants, he said. It looked a bit like crack, so I just tried it. What should happen bad?😅
Shamans use it ritually to establish contact with the Great Spirit. You blow the rapé with a v-shaped tube into the nostrils. The shamans actually take longer pipes and blow each other's nostrils. It's very strong tobacco, which burns in the nose and goes directly into the head. Shortly thereafter, a deep relaxation spreads throughout the body. I found it very pleasant, so I got some on the San Pedro market in Cusco and brought it to Germany. I still have most of it. It is really strong! Always fun to offer it to my friends. 😜 But actually there is a much deeper meaning behind it. Those who are interested should search for "sacred rapé rites".✌☺

🌸🚁 Marmalade hoverfly (male),
Episyrphus balteatus
(06/2019 in Oberursel, Germany)

Marmalade hoverflies always follow the nice weather! 🌞 This species belongs to the migratory insects and forms dense seasonal swarms. In autumn, these travel from Central Europe to the Mediterranean region (vice versa in spring). The hoverflies cross the passes of the low mountain ranges, the Pyrenees and the Alps! 👍🐝



🎶 Music: "Hey, Are You Here?"
👤 by Kara Square 🔖 Licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial 3.0 🔊 Sound effect: "Helicopter"
👤 by navaneetha kris 🔖 Licensed under
Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

🌄🔥
When the sky turns beautiful,
the sloth feels very nice.
Then the rays burn colorful
- a fire in my eyes.

The landing in Lima, capital of Peru.

It's been almost a year. Actually, I wanted to return to Peru this year, because I really enjoyed it and there's still so much to discover. Won't work! But next year for sure (together with Ecuador)! Don't think that I'm done with the travel pictures. The ground sloth stream is like a timeless dream.

Barramunda / Australian lungfish
(Neoceratodus forsteri) in the Frankfurt Zoological Garden.

There are 6 species of lungfish in the world, of which the Australian is the most primitive. The lungfish morphology has hardly changed in the last 100 million years and therefore, like the closely related coelacanths, are considered living fossils.

Genetic studies, as well as the skull structure, the arrangement and shape of the fins, the approach of separation of oxygen-rich blood from the lungs and oxygen-poor blood from the body, suggest a close relationship to the tetrapods, to which we also belong.

Netherless, the lungfish aren't considered our ancestors, but are closely related to them.

Mata mata! 😄🐢
A nocturnal freshwater turtle that is found mainly in the Amazon and Orinoco basins. There it prefers shallow waters, where it remains motionless until a fish comes close. Only small fish are eaten by creating a vacuum that sucks the prey into its mouth. The fish is swallowed whole, the structure of the mouth makes it impossible to chew.

Better not mess with this lunatic gila monster! The others already know why they shouldn't get between crazy Berenike and HER food. That's why they wait for the right moment, but always this glutton comes around the corner and grabs the loot.

Leopard geckos aren't social, they don't share. It can also come to biting and stealing out of the mouth. In order to avoid conflict, inferior females signal their submissiveness by tail waving (often towards / touching the others head) and closing the eyes.
In nature, they mostly live alone, but it comes in favorable locations to aggregations. So in their behaviour, they are fundamentally peaceful towards conspecifics (males only tolerate females). It happens that a female feels disturbed by another female and therefore wants to distance her. If the terrarium is too small and doesn't provide enough evasion space, it can be fatal. The dominant female then tries more and more pushy to chase off the other gecko without it being able to escape. The disappearance of the loser is an important part of the communication and must always be possible.

The back wall of my terrarium consists entirely of caves, so there is rarely any reason to fight. Usually my geckos give "kisses" when they meet and hang peacefully together. To avoid quarrels about food and to be fair, I usually feed by hand. But I want them to live their entire behavioral spectrum, so sometimes they can hunt. (The video shows a 10x timelapse.)

In a healthy relationship there is no compulsion. You trust and accept each other the way you are. Leopard geckos are wild animals that can become very tame. But you can neither expect nor try to force it. You have to be patient and accept that the animals only allow as much contact as they want.

Sometimes, I like to play wobbly tree with Dakota. As you can see, it's already autumn.🍂🍁🐍