How Do Tarantulas Celebrate Valentine’s Day?
February 14, 2023 · Uncategorized
Happy Valentine’s Day! To celebrate the season of love, let’s learn how Rosie and other tarantulas mate!
The mating process of these tarantulas can be very tricky as the female may try and eat the male if she gets caught hungry or in a bad mood. Males will begin the process by drumming their front leg-looking appendages (pedipalps) on the ground, which makes vibrations to communicate to the female that he is neither a meal nor a predator, that he is here “knocking” on the doors of love, specifically for reproduction.
If the female is also feeling frisky and accepts, the male will spin a “bundle of love” consisting of a hammock of silk containing a drop of sperm, also known as a sperm web. Mating for most tarantulas takes place in an upright position, which can be very dangerous due to the proximity of their fangs. The male protects himself using special spurs (hooklike structures) to hold the female’s fangs back and insets the sperm web into the female.
If the mating is successful and the eggs are fertilized the female will produce an egg sack within the following week. These egg sacks may contain as many as 500 cute baby spiderlings, or as we call them “eggs with legs”! The caring tarantula mom female will fiercely defend in their burrow until hatching.
Did you know that Butterfly Pavilion has its own breeding program? These tarantulas are safely bred by our conservationists as part of our SWARM program. A SWARM (Safety Web for Arthropod Reproduction and Management) is an AZA program that manages the breeding of invertebrates under human care, which is a more sustainable alternative to taking them from the wild.
We hope you learned something new, and happy Valentine’s Day to all of our guests, members, donors, and supporters!
