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I am geeky enough to use a USB microscope to sex my spiders 🙂
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You can pick them up cheap enough and they work well. Failing that a jewelers loupe does the job and you can get them under £5.
As far as pokies living together, they do very well as long as you are careful about how much room you give them. In the wild they live happily together if there is not that much space or too many hides. If they establish individual territories they will fight. If you encourage them to stay together and expand their territory as they grow, they tend to stay together. Where as most T's can go some time without food, and it might be quite good for them, I do make sure these have enough food.
Ok, the whole shedding/moulting thing. How the **** does it do this. And why? I can picture a snake slithering out of its skin like a sock, but I can't quite work out how the spideys do it?
These threads are fantastic. In fact, can we have a 'Friday Spidey' thread, to replace the sadly missed 'Friday Kylie' threads?
I want to see some pedelings now please.
What makes a 'good' spider? Is it the way they look? Intrigued.
More spider nurding from me then 🙂
Here is a clip of a tarantula moulting.
deadlydarcy,
you have probably seen a moult but thought it was a dead dried out spider. They are identical to what they were before, just a little bigger or more cleaner and colourful.
All inverts do it, it's how they get bigger. Most spiders moult their eyes, fangs, sex organs (see I'm at it again) and can use this time to re-grow a missing limbs or replace any urticating hairs they may have shead. The actual process can take some time, but they grow a soft exoskeleton under the hard outer. When it is time to moult, they will normally lay on their back and slowly climb out of the head area and push away with the new legs. As the inner exoskeleton is exposed to the air it will harden. If there are any problems during the "climb out" they can get stuck half in the old moult and the new moult hardens. If it's just a leg which is trapped they can chew themselves free and regrow it during the next moult. If more of them get stuck or their (book)lungs, they will probably die.
If they are free and waiting for their new outer to harden, they are very vulnerable. As all of the exoskeleton is soft their fangs, eyes, legs et cetera will be soft and very prone to damage or deformity. The [i]P.regalis[/i] I posted above are more unique as one will probably look after another while it is going through the moulting phase.
If you ever see a spider on it's back , normally on some sort of webbed hammock, they must be left alone, as they are probably moulting. Spiders don't die on their backs they tend toi go into the......."Death Curl". Slings will moult on a nearly weekly basis but an adult female like a B.smithi could be every year to two years.
Once a male has moulted to become a mature male, he will not moult any more and will eventually die.
Elfinsafety, maybe you should consider one? They take up very little space, don't make a noise, look after themselves and need feeding once or twice a week. I or other who have posted could recommend a good starter species. They can be inexpensive but if you found it wasn't for you, someone would buy it from you.
What makes a 'good' spider? Is it the way they look? Intrigued.
God knows.
I've always been interested in bugs but spiders are my favourites. If you get their set up right, you get a little window into a quite unique creature in the wild. Tarantulas are very good at looking after themselves so it you get the conditions right they will behave pretty much as they would in their native environment. They are an immense sp as far as evolution goes, some live in freezing condition, or in water, up mountains, underground, in deserts, beaches, up trees and most other places. Some hunt, hide, use disguise, webs traps and all sorts of tools. Some sp have hardly evolved since the dinosaurs and are pretty much living fossils. Their taxonomy and biology are quite unique too.
I like tarantulas but also like funnels webs, trapdoors and most "normal" or "true" spiders. If I see one I've not seen before, I tend to look after it for a while, to observe, and learn from.
As spiders never really travel very fair they are also very vulnerable to environmental changes. (Africa's largest sp was killed off during one battle in the 2nd world war.)
New sp are being discovered all of the time. The Chilobrachys sp Aladdin I posted is still not a fully recognised spider. It was only discovered a few years ago in Thailand and one of the two people who discovered them sent me the ones I have. Any observation could be unseen and helpful in understanding them. Being a bit of a geek I find this quite exciting. There are just under 1000 know sp of tarantulas but a conservative estimate is over 2000 different sp could exist. Times that by other sp of spiders and there are lots to discover, learn from and hopefully protect.
They are quite addictive though and evidently produce ramblings from arachno-fans. Apologies to anyone who may have fallen asleep, I'm sure my wife can sympathise 🙂