She’s been living in a plexiglas cube that used to be quite comfortable for her, but that pile of molts I keep on top is testimony that she just keeps on growing.
So crowded. So shabby. So this morning I relocated her to a huge, roomy 29 gallon fish tank, about 75cm x 25cm, with high class furnishings.
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OK, if you don’t want to subscribe, I’ve also posted a photo on Instagram.
This video is about an hour and 20 minutes long, but the time flew by watching it. You can learn all about the black widow here, it’s worth the time.
I arrived at my office door this morning, and what do I see?
I didn’t do it.
I’m going to have to scoop them up and bring them inside before the custodians dispose of them.
Male tarantulas, when they reach sexual maturity, are focused on wandering away to find sex, to the point where they may lose interest in eating.
Females, on the other hand, turn into voracious consumers of calories.
Blue wants her morning mealworm, and strikes like lightning.
Blue is the lab mascot, a Chromatopelma cyaneopubescens, and after their last molt, they’ve acquired the dark blue and blue-green colors of a mature greenbottle blue tarantula, and maybe reached sexual maturity. I’ve been checking out those palps, and they look very feminine to me.
Let me know what you think.
Fortunately, Blue is a perfectly good name for a female. Or male. Or immature juvenile.
Day one:
Day two:
And now, day three:
I don’t think it’s gotten any more complex, but is it changing?
Yesterday:
Today:
Isn’t complexity fun?
My black widows were relocated to new empty cages, and overnight they filled them with beautiful, intricate cobwebs, like this one.
It looks chaotic, but I can trace a couple of gumfoot lines in there that have bracing to allow them to hoist up any prey that stumbles into them.
Today I’m catching up with lab work, and the first thing I spotted after coming through the door was that our tarantula, Blue, had molted overnight. I’ve been keeping their molts as a record of their growth.
Top left is the molt from this past summer; top right is the latest, looking a bit crumpled. Human skull in the frame as a size reference.
Blue is in the background. They look smaller because they’re farther away, but trust me, Blue has grown! Also, they’re a bit cranky because I don’t think their cuticle is fully hardened yet.
I was feeding the black widows in my lab (all neatly caged, of course) when I saw this little guy hanging out just above the benchtop. Pholcus phalangioides, obviously.
I imagine most people have a little internal debate — do I squish him, or do I gently scoot him out the door? I always take the third option. I had just come from the genetics lab, with a bottle full of redundant Drosophila, and I shook a bunch out over her web. She was showered with flies! She was so excited, scurrying about to wrap them all up.
This is how I generally treat these random spiders in the lab (I call them the Ferals, and I’ve got Ferals all over the place.) I guess I shouldn’t wonder how she got here.
