Review and images by JimoAi; edited by bmathison1972
Jellyfish, along with sponges, are among the oldest living creatures on earth. They have been traced all the way back to the Cambrian period, dating back over 500 million years ago. Jellyfish are part of the phylum Cnidaria and are closest related to corals and anemones.
Today is a review of the complete set of Crabs by Play Visions, Habitat Earth series (1996). Another in the taxonomically-diverse sets of animals released by Play Visions in the mid-late 1990s. I have made some taxonomic changes to a couple figures in this set since I first presented it on the ATF back in 2016, so it seems like a good time to introduce it to the Blog!
This past week I took a trip to Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware, a vast tidal salt marsh that for this summer has provided a home to four wayward roseate spoonbills. Seeing these birds got me wanting to review a spoonbill, but alas, I don’t have one. Instead, I’ll settle on another water bird from the American deep south, the anhinga (Anhinga anhinga).
Review and images by Suspsy; edited by bmathison1972
Homarus americanus, better known as the American, Canadian, Atlantic, Maine, or northern lobster, is both the heaviest crustacean and the heaviest of all extant arthropods. Old individuals regularly average around 20 lbs and the record holder, caught off the coast of Nova Scotia in 1977, weighed a staggering 44 lbs, which is heavier than my four year old son!
Back to the “Savanah Summer”, and heading to north Africa to see one of the carnivores of Africa. While most will think of the big cats when it comes to carnivorans in Africa, be it Lions and Cheetahs and Leopards, oh my (I know, it’s not as catchy, but roll with it!) but the dogs have their teeth in that part of the world.
Thanks once again to Yowie Group and their penchant for producing some truly obscure animal toys I am now able to double the number of reviews for echinoderms on the Animal Toy Blog. Yes, as of this writing there is only one other review for a group that contains over 7,000 species.
Poecilotheria metallica is a beautiful theraphosid spider from the forests of Andhra Pradesh in India. It goes by several common names, including the Gooty sapphire ornamental tarantula, blue ornamental tarantula, and peacock tarantula, among others. It is an arboreal species, and like many tropical tarantulas, has a very limited geographic distribution, making it prone to population decline.
In just under two years ago, on August 21, 2019, I posted the first review here on the Animal Toy Blog. Now, I have the pleasure of posting review #500! Wow, 500 reviews just under two years! Many thanks to all the reviewers who have made this possible!
Allomyrina dichotoma is known as the Japanese rhinoceros beetle in English and kabutomushi in Japanese.
Time to head to central and southern Africa for this “Savanah Summer”, as we look into an intriguing omnivore. The aardvark (Orycteropus afer) is the last of the order Tubulidentata, it is a burrowing, nocturnal creature, feeding on ants, termites and the Aardvark cucumber, they are an amazing species, with it’s pig like nose for digging out insects.
As of this writing, amphibians are the most neglected vertebrate group on the ATB, with roughly a dozen reviews representing them. There’s little that can be done about this however, as aside from a few popular species the group as a whole is rarely reproduced in plastic. Frogs are obviously the most popular amphibians and dominate the toy amphibian market, although most are generic and not assigned to any particular species.
Welcome back to another “Savanah Summer”!! Over the years, companies across the globe have produced many different species, from Starlux to Safari Ltd. One of the older lines to do this is Britains, a British company that have made all sorts, from toy soldiers to farm and zoo species. They produced some very interesting species, such as this one; the common eland (Taurotragus oryx), the second largest antelope in the world, second to only the Giant Eland.
Rubber Ducky is a common name given to a species of Cubaris that was discovered in limestone caves in Thailand in 2017. To my knowledge, the species is still undescribed (I propose C. erniei). Despite this, it is becoming very popular in the hobby of rearing isopods (honestly, until I investigated this figure before buying it, I had no idea isopods were so popular in terraria).
