HELLO and WELCOME!If you've just landed here from outside the Spiders, Calgary webtree (and maybe even if you didn't), IT IS STRONGLY SUGGESTED that you jump to the front page and read the introductory paragraphs before going any further. Of course, it won't do any harm for you to read everything else too. Just don't try to do it all at once. That could cause lasting brain damage! |
Brachypelma emilia |
THOUGHT FOR THE DAYTarantulas have been around since the days of the dinosaurs. Their direct ancestors were among the first land animals. Before that, their distant marine ancestors were among the most vicious and feared carnivores in the oceans of their time! They can trace their family history back more than 525,000,000 years! (More than half a BILLION years!) Even today, while we now know more than 940 kinds, there may be again as many out there that we haven't found and described yet. By comparison, humanoids in one form or another have been around for only perhaps 5,000,000 years. (Five MILLION years.) And, while we number more than 7,000,000,000 (7 BILLION) individuals today, US! AND, WE'RE THE END OF THE LINE, LITERALLY THE LAST HURRAH OF THE GOLDEN HOARD! (With kind apologies to Norman Spinrad.) Do the math. Tarantulas' family tree has been around more than 150 times longer than ours. And, there are perhaps 2,000 as many kinds of them as there are of us. We're the "weaker-thans." (With profound apologies to the rock group by a similar name.) When the party's over and we're done and gone, tarantulas will be digging their burrows on our graves. |
FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELT. MAKE SURE YOUR SEAT BACK AND TRAY TABLE ARE SECURED IN THEIR UPRIGHT POSITIONS. THIS IS GOING TO BE ONE H*** OF A RIDE! |
OKAY, SO WE'RE ALL NEWBIES
... often for a very long time. (The first thing you need to understand.) We've done what everybody else does: Read all the Internet care sheets. Listened attentively to everything the expert down at the local pet shop told us. Wasted a lot of money on things we shouldn't have. Incorporated a lot of things that were useless or even dangerous. Stressed out over meaningless details while ignoring the real issues. Way overkill. That's not a criticism; I'm just delineating the problems we've all faced as we learn to keep tarantulas.
We can fix that.
The present author, after 45 years of keeping tarantulas, still considers himself a newbie. There's nothing wrong with being a newbie as long as we do something about it. Our tarantula's ancestry has had an incredibly long time to develop and fine tune their lives and lifestyles. They've evolved to become astonishingly complex, detailed, finely tuned creatures. And therein lies their adaptability and resiliency. They have survived nearly every conceivable natural calamity and disaster. We're gonna be playing catch-up (that's the newbie part) for a long, LONG, LONG time!
THE SECOND THING YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND
... is the KISS principle, not to infer that you're stupid. Inexperienced, maybe. Stupid, I don't think so. As proof, you can speak, read, and write English (arguably one of the more difficult languages on Planet Earth), and use a computer just fine. But, I digress. As long as you supply the basic necessities of life for your captive tarantula, the less you incorporate into its cage and care regimen, the less there is to go tragically haywire. KISS, indeed!
THE THIRD THING YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND
... is that tarantulas are like no other creature you've ever kept before. In many ways they are more alien than the characters of science fiction. Few or none of the ingrained assumptions and prejudices that you've been taught since childhood apply, and some may even be dangerous to them. They're neither angelfish, iguanas, parakeets, nor gerbils, and you don't take care of them like any of those animals. One of the biggest problems with newbies is trying to get them to abandon all their presumptions, and learn to look at the world from the vastly alien perspective of a huge, fuzzy spider.
BECAUSE TARANTULAS ARE SO BIZARRE AND UNIQUE
... you have a lot of homework to do. To begin, you need to read the following webpages.
You need to learn to look at the world from the vastly alien perspective of a huge, fuzzy spider.
Communicating with us is easy. Just select here.
Copyright © 2013, Stanley A. Schultz.
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This page was initially created on 2013-May-24.
The last revision occurred on 2014-May-13.