Unfortunately my male Chilobrachys sp Aladdin has died. He has spent several months looking for a mate but has now died a natural death.
Once matured, male tarantulas don’t moult again and instead die of old age. I would liked to have mated him (careful now) but was unable to find a suitable female in time.:(
Still it gives me a chance to show off a lovely spider which has hardly ever been seen (in the wild or captive) and explain a little spider taxonomy :)(though I should point out I am not an expert in any way) Still I won't let that get in the way.
So, Chilobrachys sp Aladdin, Mature Male
These are very rare, they have been known for about 10 years or less(I can’t remember atm) and have do not yet have an official name, which is why they have “sp Aladdin” rather than just “Aladdin”in their name. These are native to Thailand and are old world shy spiders, which web a lot.
Some tarantula males can be fairly easy to sex, this one has very long lanky legs but the main give-away are his “boxing gloves”,I will try and explain.
All spider have 8 legs, numbered l-lV on the left and l-lV on the right. The rear leg being lV.
You may have noticed there actually appear to be 5 legs either side, two short ones at the front called pedipalps. These are not legs (they lack the metatarsus) but are used more like arm/legg things. Mature males will have boxing gloves at the end of his palps, these are called cymbium. Cymbium contain a hook called the embolus.
The male will use these hooks transfer his sperm to a female during mating.
seen here using a USB miscroscope
Also all tarantulas have 8 eyes, which are separated into 2 rows, anterior row and posterior row. These can sometimes be difficult to see so I’ve taken a closer shot.
The eyes are called ocular tubercle or eye turrets and are normally set out in the same pattern, depending slightly on the species. The eyes on the outside of the turret are known as lateral eyes and those on the inside are median eyes. So this gives us anterior lateral eyes (ALE), anterior median eyes (AME), posterior lateral eyes (PLE) and posterior median eyes (PME)
Bottom left AME
Bottom right ALE
Top left PME
Top right PLE
and lastley a few more shots of the old fella when he was doing what he did best 
(well I did say he was shy).
RIP Claudius
