Tarantula Pet Owner Interview

I decided to go out into the spider community to get more information on what it's like to own a tarantula (before I get one) to see the pros and cons of a pet tarantula. The person who I interviewed was Ms. Domingues Murphy who has had past experiences with owning a pet tarantula (Chilean Rose-Haired) from the Science Center where she had also had past experience with tarantulas along with many other animals like hissing-cockroaches. She has taught me multiple things when owning a tarantula like:
  • Getting crickets from a pet store every month
    • Around 3 crickets a week
    • Be careful during the process of feeding 
      • Crickets might escape and can infest the house
  • Always handle tarantulas close to the floor
  • Get rid of infestations especially mites from substrate
  • People who want to own a tarantula needs to be informed
At the Science Center:
  • She taught groups of kids basic information on each animal
  • The kids needed to handle the tarantula on the floor
    • They needed to be calm before handling one
  • She kept some molts to show the kids
  • Evolution was not taboo to talk about
  • They used a calm tarantula for the kids (no urticating hairs/biting)
    • Another tarantula she had at the time was no where near calm
  • Taught kids about other animals like the hissing cockroach 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tarantula Fun Fact #1: Web Size

Image
Spider webs are one of the smallest things a human can perceive with the naked eye of average eyesight. The human's limit of sight are 0.1 millimeters (100 micrometers) while the smallest web width is around 0.3 millimeters (webs range to around 0.3-0.8 millimeters width). But typically, tarantulas have thicker webbing than other spiders because of how the webs are extremely similar to cobwebs when spread about the floor. Now, I'm not particularly saying that spider webs are the 2nd smallest things we can see and that there are sizes around the egg cell like dust particles that can be seen in the sunlight or particularly small crumbs. Fun-fact inside a fun-fact: The upmost tiniest thing a human can see is a human female egg (female eggs are the biggest cell in the human body) and that sperm cells are the smallest cells. 
Read more

Fun Fact #5: Formidable Infestation

Image
Once the spider population in a home is so over grown, not only in basements and dusty corners but in everyday rooms can be overcome with extremely dangerous types of spiders like a huntsman, recluse, tarantula or even black widow can kill. Many don't know how spiders anatomy works especially when it comes to their defenses like venom and how their venom is regained over a certain amount of time. Depending on the genus, a couple of bites could kill and so even though spiders usually aren't aggressive, this could still pose a huge threat particularly when neighboring spiders are close within territories, causing stress. This could mainly cause a threat against weak or vulnerable people like new born babies, elderly, or in dire need of help of an illness. But don't fret, these demonstrations would be considered a rare case because of how unlikely it is to happen since there are many ways on preventing a huge spider infestation in human-active places but nonetheless, be weary
Read more

Substrate

Image
I've been following a subreddit for tarantula lovers and many people keep saying that owners need to keep putting more substrate into their habitats. I do totally agree that tarantulas need a lot of room for their man cave (burrows) but they definitely do need room to use their webs and more space to actually catch their prey.
Read more