Hello and welcome to this month's spider diaries...

And hasn't it been going well ? Unless you're into football, I'm told. It's been very hot of late, so heatmats off all round, even for small poecilotheria, who like it 85F+. The general humidity is proving more of a nightmare to control, and attempting to 'mist' tiny arboreal enclosures is something of a joke, until I get myself a perfume mister. However, all spiders are doing well, so something must be working. 

All the 'big ones' have been doing their thing as normal this month - Ginny has stopped escaping, made a new burrow in a corner of her tank and has stopped eating (presumably to begin a 3 month pre-moult), Zebs is calm (though did threat posture the water yesterday) and eating lots, as is Binky, who is looking increasingly too big for her tank.

This month, we focus on the small ones, being Fluffy, the Peruvian Orange stripe, and Legz, the Sri-Lankan Ornamental. 

Had not seen anything of fluffsters for the last 3 weeks, and was worried, so after much thought, took the carefully evaluated decision to go in, disrupt her burrow, and check all was OK... Glad I left it as long as I did - it turned out she had very recently moulted, and had I gone in any earlier could have killed her through mid-moult stress alone...

She has grown to an inch now, with some wonderful colouring.

Following the delicate destruction of her burrow, (through which she made it completely untouched) she sat still for 3 minutes (possibly for the photos, but on second thoughts not), and then walked calmly into the burrow I had made for her in the first place, which she had previously ignored entirely. Obviously good enough for a plan B...

So anyway - I rescued her exuvium as well, so photo attached...

Legz, the demon speedball baby pokie is conspicuous in the photos by her absence. She does that a lot. Very very difficult to get any shots of her 'out' in the daytime. She is in both pictures, but you'd never know - that burrow does the job perfectly...

And even if it didn't, she wouldn't have to worry - even when out in the open, she's STILL very difficult to spot, and is perhaps the best camouflaged sling I have ever seen. Which is something I really have to watch out for when doing tank cleans and things, you need to know where she is.

Legz, being arboreal, uses webbing differently to all the others I've shown you so far. It's still not sticky webbing, like true spiders make, but there is lots more of it, and it is formed into elaborate and intricate tube tunnels, which not only raise the humidity within, but also make for superlatively speedy manoeuvring for the spider, and supremely difficult manoeuvring for pretty much anything else. Note in particular the perfectly round burrow at the base - amazing...

Crickets don't know what to do in it. Legz does know what to do with crickets standing still thinking about it. Which reminds me - another difference - venom strength - with all my terrestrials, it takes 30 secs-1 minute for things to die having been tagged. Not so in young Pokie's case - they stop moving 3-10 seconds after being hit. But it's not all bad news for baby crickets...

Ridiculously fast as ornamentals are, they are unwilling to leap across open space to chase prey, so Legz actually fails to get fed 3 strikes out of 4 simply because the cricket jumps faster and further than the spider. But then it was just after that started happening that she erected all that webbing to reduce the effectiveness of these heroic leaps to safety... so there you go - adapt and overcome in action, at least until she is big enough to jump herself...

And that's it for spider news this month, or until something else exciting happens...

Take care everyone..

L,F,G, Z, B and J