Welcome to the February 2007 Spider Diary

...and what an exciting edition it is ! Making a debut this month, full colour video with soundtrack, and titles, and everything ! Good grief, its almost professional :)

Let's plough straight in and have a report on Fluffy, a spider that is usually to be found either securely closeted away in her burrow, or calmly scaling the walls of her enclosure, not in an attempt to escape, but just because that's where she'd like to be. But young spider's grow, and I was checking in on her the other day, and thought that her tank was looking a bit on the small side...

So action was taken, and amazingly I had all the right bits to make her a nice new home, into which I transferred her that very evening. I also did a step by step tank tutorial while I was at it that you can read here , should you be interested...

Fluffy has never been 'interacted-with' before, and this was consistant with her attitude at first being lightly touched on the back of her hind legs with an artists paintbrush. She jumped on it immediately, a millisecond later realised it wasn't food, and went into a full-on frontal threat posture at ME, bless her :) So I backed away, waited for her to calm down (only 30 secs or so), and then tried again. This time she seemed to realise that the paintbrush meant her no harm, and calmly went where it was suggesting. I lined up the 2 tanks, and gently coaxed her from one to the other, and no further spider-excitement ensued... well done, Fluffy !

Here's a photo of her in her new tank, looking relaxed and wonderful...

 And now we move on to another exciting debut for the spider diaries...

Using a slightly better camera, indoor lighting, a bit of imagination, and some editing time I am pleased to bring you some video that is perhaps a cut above my standard fare... Yes indeed, not only is it NOT night vision, and therefore COLOUR, but its is also LONG, so we get to see more than just a micro-clip, and there's even sound and titles.

Here then is Fluffy, 1 minute after the door to her new home has closed behind her for the first time.

 

One of the only moults to be retrieved from Flash. 5 more will be revealed when she moves tanks !

 

 

This is Legz's 6th instar moult, and the first to display adult warning colours. We can safely assume she is extremely venomous now.  Note the fang top left, which is currently around the 1 cm mark in size. Small compared to her overall size, I note, however... Binky's were nearly twice the size at that instar.

 

 

This is the carapace from the same 6th instar Poecilotheria. We can see 8 very well positioned eyes. Arboreals like these have reputedly rather better eyesight than their terrestrial cousins.

 

 

Legz gets logarithmically bigger ! Notice adult colouration first appears at 6th instar - before that there were no warning colours, and she was a more even overall brown, assumedly so that she would 'blend in' better while young.

 

 
And lastly for this bit, we have young Boots, and Tenebrus contributing to small pile of brightly coloured, very early 2nd, 3rd, and 4th instar moults. Neither of these spiders will end up looking like any of these moults as adults. For reasons I am not sure of, these guys start out in life fairly brightly coloured and patterned, and get less so, or differently so, later.
 
Strangely, even the zingy and vibrantly coloured Boots is STILL a nightmare to find in her tank sometimes, so it just goes to show that the brightest-hued of spiders can still blend in to the right environment fairly seamlessly - how clever...
 
Moving on, here's a shot of Flash, my small avicularia's tank, into which her old tank has subsequently been placed, and we are now commencing the XX weeks wait for the spider to notice. Can we see her at all ? Not even slightly.

 

 

As you can see, she's not in it there yet, but now that she is, it makes no difference, and we still couldn't see here, hence no live avicularia photos this month !

 

Next up is possibly the most beautiful spider I look after, alive and well, and showing us why keeping spiders is a good idea. Please bask in the reflected glory that is a newly moulted sub-adult Poecilotheria fasicata in full ventral display mode...

 

 

Normally we wouldn't see the yellow at all unless she was threatening us... as shown below... however, in this photo, I am pleased to report that here she is not threatening us, and is simply hanging out on the glass where we are lucky enough to see her ventral colouring.

 

 

HOW WELL does this spider blend in with the branch on which she sits ?!! Awesome camouflage in action. Note how we see no yellow at all when the spider is relaxing the right way up !

 

 

But flash lighting brings out those colours very well when she basking on the cool glass... 

 

And Legz is the last spider we'll be looking at today. Oh - except just quickly, we should pop and have a look at little 'Boots', the ever-hungry, but absolutely tiny chromatopelma cyaneopubescens. Here she has done some fantastic web alterations, and now has a much more extensive and complex webbing strategy it would seem ! Very chaotic, but impressive nontheless !

 Note the central patch on her back, which is her main patch of developing urticating hair. It is not jet black, suggesting a moult is on the way. Consequently, I have stopped feeding her, and mist her tank every other day or so. 

  

So - all well in spider land for another month, and the end of what has hopefully been an interesting and informative report.

 

See you next time !

 

Ginny, Zebs, Binky, Legz, Flash, Fluffy, Tenebrus, Boots , and me...