Feb 1, 2007

As Requested - Baby Pinktoes

My Amazon Crawling post solicited a number of comments, including one from Jade Walker, who commented that he and his wife had had 200 pinktoe tarantulas hatch at their house. Gretchen was intrigued and asked for a photo. And Jade delivered.

Here are a series of photos of said baby pinktoe tarantulas. Their scientific name is 'avicularia avicularia', which means "birdeater birdeater", but you'll be happy to know that these spiders are actually quite docile and make for great pets. As Jade puts it, they even prance like ballerinas wearing little pink slippers.

The sac below contained 99 spiderlings, and it was the mom's first sac ever. Congratulations! I'll admit that the spider in the last photo looks cute. That's a first for me. Jade and his wife breed inverts, including a variety of tarantulas, roaches, and centipedes, numbering in the thousands. He sent me quite a number of good photos, so stay tuned - there's more to come.

Thanks for the photos, Jade.


16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Please, I beg of you ... no more centepieds!

Anonymous said...

That sac of spiders looks like trouble brewing.

BTW, how do you count them? I would get to about 27 and start mixing them up.

Anonymous said...

We had to count them because the owner of the male got half. It's not too hard, because we have to seperate them before they get too old so they won't eat each other. We just count the stacks of cups (5 per stack, usually).

Anonymous said...

I should also add that some species can have as many as 4,000 babies in a single sac. Those are the ones I dread counting! ;)

Anonymous said...

OMG! I'm a in love with those widdle beebees! I'm SQUEEING on this end.

I'm only anonymous because I'm too lazy to get a blog account right now.

Thanks for those pictures!

Call me Arachnophile

Anonymous said...

You want to know how to count them, swintah? You count all the legs and then divide by eight!

("Smartass" is my middle name.)

Anonymous said...

Ahhh, so that's how it's done.

I was thinking that there would be some sort of vacuum powered laser device that would suck up the spiderlettes one by one, count each, then deposit them handily in a jar.

I guess just counting could work too.

(Cute, Smarty-bats. Much better than counting noses.)

Raging Wombat said...

bats, your counting concept intrigued me, so I tested it out last night. It totally works! The same method also works for counting eyes! Genius!

Anonymous said...

These pics are seriously giving me the heebs!!! BLAH!

Anonymous said...

Spiders got noses? :-o

Anonymous said...

Why count noses when you can count toeses?

*self-satisfied grin*

Anonymous said...

Okay, that last photo clearly belongs on Cute Overload! I'm with anonymous, I am squeeing at it!

Anonymous said...

I don't like being anonymous, anyways, Jade, I was wonder if you could tell me, what age do those Tarantulas grow their fangs, and what's the approximate age do you think they start producing their venom? tell me at my Email account mikezangi@yahoo.com please tell me!

Anonymous said...

Ummm just came upon your site (wonderful!) but something concerns me... in the 3rd photo with the paper plate... what is on her thumb? Was she bitten? Are those puncture wounds?

Anonymous said...

I just picture her making little eyes and a mouth on her pointer and thumb to entertain the little baby spiders.

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