I just uploaded a video of the little red and white moving dirt around in his enclosure to Youtube. He's neat to watch. :terrsmile:

Congrats on your latest additions Sparky!

Who knew I'd learn so much about spiders from being a member of "Never Forgotten"?

My youngest girl thinks you're totally cool & wants a spider for a pet now after seeing your pictures. :)

Aw! That's awesome, lol. ;D

Cool spiders, Sparky! ;D

Tarantulas really are great pets, and are very easy to care for(most of 'em, anyway). While they aren't affectionate like a dog or cat(and some folks will argue that those don't show affection, either, but either submission or food-begging), they DO have distinct personalities and some interesting and often-funny behavior. It's neat to see them do things that we do normally associate with "higher" animals, like washing themselves or carrying around an empty water dish as if to provide you with a strong hint, hint!

pitbulllady

Cute, creepy, and cool! Me likes the taranchillas! I'm actually afraid of spiders, but I find those cool!

How are your baby spideys doing? Do your spiders live in separate quarters or can they live as a community?

This is most interesting! I'm not afraid of spiders (but snakes I'm like Indianna Jones here!:wiltshock:). I didn't know they would show these characteristics. Thank you for your reply. My 8 yo really needs a pet tarantula now after I read this to her. 8D

I can answer that first one: most spiders, regardless of size, do not "play well with others", to put it mildly. They are highly cannibalistic(or is that "cannonballistic", as according to Eduardo?)by nature, and bigger ones will almost always eat smaller ones, even of the same species. Only a few species of spider are communal, and even among those, they recognize members of their colony and will attack outsiders that intrude, like wolves in a pack will kill wolves from another pack. A few species of tarantula will tolerate same-size members of their own species, as long as everyone is well-fed, but once somebody gets hungry, any of their living companions will be fair game! For this reason, tarantulas and other spiders are best kept separately, each with his/her own enclosure.

pitbulllady

Like pbl said, the simple answer is no. Don't ever house them together. I don't even know how filmmakers shot scenes like that one in Something Wicked This Way Comes where a slew of tarantulas swarm all over the one kid's bedroom - there must have been a lot of "spidercide" on the set...

The babies are good so far. The chromatus is one fat little toddler, I could probably stand to feed him a little less. He drinks like a sponge; he was more likely than not deprived of water for a good while prior to the reptile show, though his abdomen wasn't shriveled. He's too young to tell his gender just yet, he needs to get a bit bigger. But I can't wait to know. The teeny one has webbed up his vial like mad and seems good. I did find out after I got him that the species has demanding humidity and temp needs, like my snake, which worried me because it is VERY dry here. I hope he does okay.

Just be sure to do your homework! Arachnoboards is a good place to start, and if you get a common G. rosea ("rosie") there's a whole section just on taking care of them properly, as they are the common pet store tarantulas that are so often sold by pet stores who don't know anything about t's to customers who don't know anything about t's. Anyways, you can find pbl there (as pitbulllady) and me too (NeitherSparky).

Most of the movies have Common Pink-toes(Avicularia avicularia) in them, which is one of the few tarantula species that can be kept communally, IF they're all very well-fed. Often, the "spider wranglers" will stick them in a refrigerator for a short time to slow down their metabolism and make them more sluggish, then the filmmakers will speed up the sequence to make it look like they're running all over the place, when in fact they were barely able to move at all and not interesting in eating each other while in that state of semi-suspended animation. It's risky to the spiders, and I'm sure a lot of them DO get killed during filming, which is another reason filmmakers prefer using Pink-toes: they're cheap, as tarantulas go. They also are very safe to have around the crew and cast, since they're so passive.

I'd also recommend many of the Aphonopelma species of tarantula as first-time pets, especially the New Mexican or Tuscon Blonde, Aphonopelma chalcodes. Sparky has one of those, and I've got four, and I often call them the "Golden Retrievers of the tarantula world", lol. They are just that laid-back and docile, and they're easy to care for, especially when compared to the tree-dwelling tropical tarantulas, like the Pink-toes. They have a much more reliable temperament than the Rosehairs, which tend to swing from "Wilt" to "Duchess", or even "Berry", all over the span of a few days, when it comes to moods!

pitbulllady