It's another month, and another Spider Diary. And again, dear reader, it's all going on. They're eating, they're webbing, they're getting threaty, and doing all sort of other endearing and fascinating things that it is a pleasure to share with you. So, once more into the breach we go, as we fill you in on the...

LATEST HEADLINES...

Somebody else turns out to be male...
2 new arrivals settle in...
New  Spider Diaries front page !
2 new features added...
Boot's gives her best video performance yet...
Tenebrus gets cross...
Some best ever photos emerge...
Updates on everyone

Let'start off today's spidery report with some truly unusual news. We have had a threat position from one of our animals ! Indeed - only the second in 5 years of spider-keeping (Ginny was the first in a very uncharacteristic manoeuvre she made around 3 years ago, and has not repeated since). So, who was responsible for this little display of crossness ? It was Tenebrus, and he might have been cross because of the second thing he is notable for in this month's diary - because he's a mature male. Of course I jest - this is not the reason he angry, but the fact that yet another one of my spiders has matured male, and will consequently very short-lived, might affect the concern levels of keepers who cared about that sort of thing...

Whilst I don't care what sex my animals are, it still causes me concern when lots of them turn out to be  male, because it means I have a rather limited time to try and find female equivalents among the UK spider-keeping community, so that I can attend to my animals' pressing mating needs. This is one of the few times I rather wish I lived America, where there seems to be huge amounts of people that keep inverts, but no, over here there are only several hundred in the entire country, and a grand total of 3 that I know about within a 60 mile radius, so hopes for spider-breeding are not high. Mature males like to wander, and obviously, in captivity, they can't. Howver they still try, and watching a spider ever-cirling its enclosure trying to leave can be depressing for a keeper who wants his or her animals to be content and happy. The search for spider love-action continues...

Back to the plot, and it turns out that Tenebrus objected to me filling the water bowl that was inches in front of him, and felt it necessary to throw his front legs and palps dramatically into the air, and then to wiggle his fangs at me for a good 5 minutes until I stopped my water bowl antics, and retreated. I was so shocked to see this reaction from what has historically been a completely non-hostile spider that I didn't take photos, and instead sat and watched him until he had dropped his display. I have to say his wiggly fangs, and determined leg-waving was extremely sweet and endearing, but as much as I find it so, I shall try to avoid future occurences by only filling his bowls when he is in his bark hide, and won't feel under duress...

So it was then I got a good look at the underside of his palps, and sure enough, there were what might well be his palpal emboli - in his species, little black spheres at the end of his 3rd pedipalp section. His name and info have been duly added to Tarantula Dating so that he has the maximum chance of doing what comes naturally sometime before he expires.

Here are some photos I popped off the other week at feeding time, where we get to see our adult Suntiger in fairly stunning close-up action. He is smaller than I thought an adult would be - perhaps 4" legspan. Females can reach double that, I hear. He is also a great deal hairier and less contrastingly-patterned than his female equivalent would be, but to my eyes at least he is magnificent nonetheless. Definitely worth clicking all these for a proper large view.

In this first shot, lunch has just been served...

 

Under flash lighting even a poecilotheria's excellent camouflage is compromised...

 

 

 

Hanging out on the glass allows us to see his stunning ventral colours, which, to this day, has never been thrown at me as part of a threat display. If Poecilotheria are documented to be aggressive, there is no evidence of that to be found here.

 

 

 

Chilling where it's warm (pun intended).

 

And lastly...

 

 

Legz, after patiently enduring a good half hour of photos and flashing bright lights finally informs me that he's had enough, and casually wanders back to "home B".

 

So where shall we go now, having caught up on the latest with Tenebrus, Legz, and Fluffy. Let's pause our monthly look at the boys to tell you some more general spider-news. You should have noticed your shiny new front page , which has been lovingly updated to include a flash slideshow header, and new graphics for all gallery links, and some new features have appeared too - some finished, other less so, but under development nonetheless.

 

ArachnoPix is a full screen slideshow, with accompanying (original) soundtrack that will be updated to showcase the latest photos thought to be 'generally quite good', without having to go looking through diaries and galleries etc. At the moment it's still not quite finished, so only has around 10 pics so far. I am to make it the best 30 eventually... click here if you'd like to pop there now, but please bear in mind it's only a test version - timings and transitions aren't great yet...

 

Also new is 'The Tarantula's Tale' which I am going to be infuriatingly vague about at the moment until it is ready to go, which is likely to be a while. All I shall say for now is that it will be another Internet spider first, and hopefully a worthwhile addition to our ever-growing range of special articles and extra features...

 

Righty - back to our 8-legged friends... let's go and see our other big guys - so that'll be Zebs, Ginny, and Binky. Before I throw some more pics your way, let's catch up on how they're doing.

 

Ginny remains her normal calm and gentle self, wandering very rarely, eating well, and playing her own game of 'flip the waterbowl' for reasons I am unaware of. But 5 times this months alone I pop a new waterbowl in, and an hour later it is flipped, and piled in a corner. 

 

Zebs is on a diet so hasn't eaten anything since the maybugs of last month. This month, however she is not looking quite so massively full, so she may get a cricket or 2. She still comes out to investigate the smallest of disturbances, but recently tends to run away from water bowl-refillings as she really doesn't enjoy being splashed by droplets falling from on high.

 

Binky is looking increasingly like he is heading for pre-moult, if he isn't there already (oh, he's male today, is he ?). He too was last fed at the end of May, but since then has been flicking hairs arbitrarily, and the bare patches subsequently revealed are a very dark, suggesting a moult is imminent. However he is very large, and getting on a bit, so 'imminently' might still mean 6 weeks or longer. Even after 5 years of spider-keeping it still bothers me not to feed them for this long, but it does get easier with time, and sometimes I even feel partially 'in-sync' with my spiders moulting cycles, and seem to generally guess OK when they are due for another shed. today's further clues included watching him spend ages taking in water from his newly refilled bowl seconds after it arrived...

 

On with photos then, and we'll go in size order, so starting with Zebs...

 

 

Drinking the morning away...

 

 

And astride one's burrow...note massive bottom despite diet. Not as massive as it was, though.

 

On to Binky now, who might still not be winning the award for heaviest spider, but is on the shortlist for largest legspan, even with one of them only partially regenerated ! She's been out and about this month, jumping on anything that moves, but otherwise being her normal calm and placid self. Here she is (yep, now we're going with female - I really have no idea).

 

 

There she is, relaxing by one of her burrows...

 

And finally, only about 8 months after she regrew it, she chooses to show us some good close-ups of her (then) brand new leg...

 

 

 And here we can see her dull brown colouring and black exposed patches on her opisthosoma that suggest a moult isn't far away.

 

 

This moult will be happening sooner than normal, and will have been speeded up by the spider to quickly develop the regrown leg to full capacity. I will be most interested to see how it grows next time round.

 

And let's quickly pop over and see what Ginny is looking like, the smallest and in many ways 'smartest' of our adult spiders. Here she is sitting proudly in front of her recently upturned water bowl. Bad spider.

 

 

Well, we haven't had any video for a while, have we ? Only one new one this month, I'm afraid, but though I say so myself, it does feature some rather good spider-footage, and it's an ideal opportunity to catch you up on the ever-wonderful Boots, currently winning all prizes for 'spider with most personality, and video-friendly qualities'. Oh yes, supremely beauitiful, daring and brave, curious and inquisitive, if I was the sort of the keeper who did 'favourites', she would be very close to the top. We'll have some photos later, but for now, here she is, showing us how it's done in the related fields of catching, eating, and webbing...

 

 

 

Oh she is a wonderful spider. If there is one I hope is not male it would be her - male Greenbottles tend to get eaten after mating, and it would be a shame to lose him even he did get to some mating action in the process. Here's the latest photos of Boot's.

 

 

 

Here she is captured during the video above, eating Alan, and Alan, 2 of the 3 crickets she caught.

 

 

So that must be all our adult, and sub-adult girls and boys reported on and up-to-date, so let's move on to the recently ever-reclusive young Flash. I haven't seen much of her for a while, though my in-web cameras show me that she's still very much alive, and webbing furiously behind her main section of cork bark. I have a feeling there is actually rather a complicated network of tunnels behind there, but it really is very difficult to see. Anyway - this week she popped out for a meal and wander, so I grabbed a quick photo while she was out and around. Despite having a relatively large back end, she hasn't eaten for about a month or more (never hanging out where food normally arrives) so I had assumed she was heading for a moult, but she took the test cricket I put in during her brief outing, so I have had to rethink that theory.

 

 

That bald patch on her opisthosoma looks quite light under flash light (no pun intended), but significantly darker not, so I remain mystified when her next moult is due. Let us hope there are other signs.

 

And moving on, the last additions to this month's spidery update are our youngest charges, Poecilotheria subfusca 'Whizz, and Megaphobema Robustum 'Blaze'... Both have settled in absolutely fine and are surprising and delighting me at every turn with all the wonderful things they do. you can expect a 'young ones special' to emerge this month.

 

Blaze is the most movement-sensitive spider I have ever come across, and although she does like to spend a lot of time at the surface, close to her burrow entrance, I can't get close than 10 ft away, even treading riculously softly and carefully, without her bolting at hyperspeed to the very bottom of her hide. This does not for good photo opportunities make. But I am stunningly patient, and being equally tehcnologically aware, I primed a suitably positioned camera with a remote shutter release, and filmed her on movement-sensitive webcam until I saw her come out to bask. So we have the photo below, in which we see some very orange legs...

 

 

 

Whizz, on the other hand is very visible, and seems to get mysteriously larger every time I look at her, yet doesn't eat massive amounts, and has not moulted in a way that I have noticed, or that has left any remains. Consequently, I assume she hasn't. Oh but she is quite wonderful - already very inquisitive, but a little flighty and nervous.  With young pokies it is nigh on impossible to tell when they are about to moult, as they stop eating only just before, and don't change appearance much or at all during pre-moult. Here's Whizz, sitting astirde what I had hoped she might use as a burrow, but instead got turned over, and used as flooring. In her next tank, we will start adding surface variation, and proper burrows...

 

 

 

More on them next month, I promise...

 
So that's all the news form this month in spider-land other than to tell you that we have found a new mouse-mate who isn't terrified of tarantulas ! It took a while, and several people most definitely had a problem with them, but a well done to Lisa from me, who seems to find them interesting, and even comes down to watch feeding time occasionally :)

 

 And that, I think, is that for another month. Take care everyone, and we'll see you next time...

 

B, B, B, G, W, Z, F, F, L, T and me...