Ain’t She Cute!

… or maybe it should be, “Ain’t he handsome!” I’m not really good at telling about these things with tarantulas. All I can determine from reading up on them on the web is that, “The terminal segments of the pedipalps of male tarantulas are moderately larger in circumference than those of a female tarantula.” But I wasn’t about to attempt a measurement. Besides, there wasn’t an example of the opposite sex to compare against handy.

The B-movies my wife watches assume that tarantulas can spray caustic liquid at their victims. Wikipedia says that’s true! “The tarantula’s mouth … is a short straw-shaped opening that can only suck, meaning that anything taken into it must be in liquid form. Prey with large amounts of solid parts, such as mice, must be crushed and ground up or predigested, which is accomplished by spraying the prey with digestive juices that are secreted from openings in the chelicerae.”

But here’s something I’ll bet you didn’t know. They don’t use the iron based “hemoglobin” that is in the blood of most animals to carry oxygen through their bodies. Instead, copper-based “hemocyanin” does the job. And they don’t have a circulatory system, or even actual blood cells like most animals. They do rely on a liquid that is called “haemolymph” that serves the same function. Since they really don’t have blood vessels, if something makes a hole in the exoskeleton of a tarantula, the loss of hemolymph can easily kill the poor little guy unless the wound is really small.

This beauty was under a tarp on our roof when we went up to enjoy the sunset (this explains the glass used for a size comparison). That roof gets hot enough to cook anything so we decided that it would be for his own good to get him to some safer place. Since tarantulas may live for years (A 30-year life span has been recorded) we figured it was worth some trouble to help out this neighbor. He was easy to catch in a kitchen colander and we didn’t harm even one of his thousands of hairs. We let him go again near some big rocks where we figured he could hide pretty easily.

I almost felt guilty letting him go because we also see a lot of “Tarantula Hawk” wasps flying around. These monsters are two to three inches long and are the mortal enemy of the tarantula. But you have to let nature take it’s course, I guess.