As my thesis is making me indescribably miserable, here’s a brief interlude for something more fun: my new pets! I have some delightful new creatures in my home, which are helping to stop me from slowly trying to paper-cut my wrists open with Gelman & Hill (2006).

The addition of these new pets are also borne of my burgeoning interest in invertebrate macro photography, a terribly clichéd manoeuvre that seems to affect nearly everybody who works with very small animals. I have been a little obsessed with the work of photographers such as Alex Wild and Piotr Naskrecki for some time, but it was really during the planning of my recent trip to Borneo that I decided to do some more investigation as to how it all worked.

Thus began my descent into a strange world where people speak in reverent yet frantic tones about depth of field, where light diffusion is discussed ad nauseum, where lenses are put on backwards or moved away from the camera body with tubes and bellows, where expensive electronics are combined with milk cartons, with sellotape, with pringles cans… but I digress. My new houseguests are fantastically exciting and charismatic, but they are also tiny, which makes them ideally suited to my attempts to continue with this hobby as the clammy grip of the Scottish climate begins to tighten. Inspired by the incredible photos of Thomas Shahan, I recently purchased a little duo of jumping spiders, of the species Phidippus regius. Given such a species title, they require suitably regal names, so please meet Boadicea and Prasutagus:

Boadicea

Prasutagus

By a stroke of good fortunate, I also received some Plexippus petersi babies from the very awesome Emily Burdfield-Steel; they are some tinily photogenic little scamps themselves:

It is early days yet, but I hope to amass some nice shots of all of these, and – with luck, patience, trepidation, and possibly a paintbrush to help prise them apart if things get ugly – to breed P. regius as well. You know what that means: spider porn.

I can’t wait.

Oh, and don’t worry: original small pet Professor Furious is still alive and well, and is making himself available for photoshoots. I also just found out that we are rescuing some unwanted stick insects in the near future, so I shall soon be blessed with an embarrassment of tiny riches!

But, for now, I must return to my books. These wrists won’t slowly gouge themselves.