Butteryfly World...

Wee tip...

If you are ever in the vicinity of Dalkeith near Edinburgh, make a point of going to visit Butterfly World. One of the best uses of a fiver I've had in ages.

You walk into the main butterfly habitat and it is absolutely teeming with butterflys of every imaginable size and colour just flying around about you and feeding on the fruit that's been left for that purpose. Ewan was having a ball and just kept pointing at everything. Everywhere you looked, there was something interesting to see. I was actually afraid I was going to stand on some these beautiful insects.

In addition to the butterflys, there was also a reptile section with a frikkin huuuugge python in one of the tanks, a honeybee section, assorted big creepy crawlies and red ants which were brilliantly collecting cut leaves and trooping along purposely hung rope just above head height.

I thought I'd transfer a bit of knowledge I was told today. They had on display what looked like dead tarantulas. I was informed however that it was in fact a discarded skeleton. Most invertebrates, spiders included have their skeletons on the outside of their body. This particular tarantula (in the tank next to me) had outgrown it's skeleton. The top comes off of their body from where they climb out of it in their new skeleton which is soft leaving them particularly vunerable for a couple of weeks.