critterguy
Active Member
Hey all, as I've already mentioned I capture, breed and look after certain sp of invertebrate, mainly centipedes, Huntsmans, Tarantula's, Scorpians, stick insects, mantids and aquatic insects with the odd true bug, beetles and other spiders here and there.
Sorry for the extra long post, 1st time keeping the following type of spider, am excited for now, won't be as excited once they breed as the male is ment to die after that and the female rarely leaves the burrow.
Someone in the burbs of south Sydney on the inverts forum I'm member and mod of has the misfortune of having a mouse spider colony in his yard that springs to life in summer-June (march-may and summer is the main breeding time, especially after rain).
They usually end up collecting and posting off about 100 of the buds this time of the year off to zoo's and hospitals for antivenom research, mainly males as the females usually stay put in their burrows and the males wander in search of them/their burrows.
I managed to get another member that knows them to set aside a pair for me, here they are, in most cases their venom hasn't done much harm in research but also has the potential to do great harm.
So I gotta be extra careful around these buds when cleaning the enclosure etc and mainly use long handled slippery things to do so if they are out or if near their burrow as they have a extra sharp set of claws on a pair of their front legs and are very fast, so can climb up tongs/sticks before ya know it.
They usually go into a defensive pose bearing their sizeable fangs and try to strike first before they will try to run at you but not always in that order and studies have shown that unlike funnelwebs they don't usually load their fangs with a drop of venom.
So you have a higher chance of getting a warning dry bite but in saying that they are the bulldogs of the spider world and can try to bite deep and cling on once they do decide to strike, so the dry bite chances can also be nil.
Their fangs can also go through gloves, so no handling of the buds when moving them, got to corral them into a container with a stick/rod to remove them from the enclosure.
Which can be hard due to their aggro nature, hard to gently guide something into a container if they keep arcing up at the stick/tool you are trying to guide them with.
I like them, they have character, are only small (2-3cm) but look like they mean business and often do, I'll get some defensive pics further down the track, gotta let them settle in.
The 2 sets of pics were taken 1.5 hrs apart, 1st pair just after tipping them in, the female took off to dip in the corner and was still there for the 2nd pic of her.
By the way the big things at the mouth aren't the fangs just the jaws, the fangs were retracted and hidden for those pics, do a google of mouse spider and you'll get to see what they look like in defensive posture, they are fearsome looking.
Sorry for the extra long post, 1st time keeping the following type of spider, am excited for now, won't be as excited once they breed as the male is ment to die after that and the female rarely leaves the burrow.
Someone in the burbs of south Sydney on the inverts forum I'm member and mod of has the misfortune of having a mouse spider colony in his yard that springs to life in summer-June (march-may and summer is the main breeding time, especially after rain).
They usually end up collecting and posting off about 100 of the buds this time of the year off to zoo's and hospitals for antivenom research, mainly males as the females usually stay put in their burrows and the males wander in search of them/their burrows.
I managed to get another member that knows them to set aside a pair for me, here they are, in most cases their venom hasn't done much harm in research but also has the potential to do great harm.
So I gotta be extra careful around these buds when cleaning the enclosure etc and mainly use long handled slippery things to do so if they are out or if near their burrow as they have a extra sharp set of claws on a pair of their front legs and are very fast, so can climb up tongs/sticks before ya know it.
They usually go into a defensive pose bearing their sizeable fangs and try to strike first before they will try to run at you but not always in that order and studies have shown that unlike funnelwebs they don't usually load their fangs with a drop of venom.
So you have a higher chance of getting a warning dry bite but in saying that they are the bulldogs of the spider world and can try to bite deep and cling on once they do decide to strike, so the dry bite chances can also be nil.
Their fangs can also go through gloves, so no handling of the buds when moving them, got to corral them into a container with a stick/rod to remove them from the enclosure.
Which can be hard due to their aggro nature, hard to gently guide something into a container if they keep arcing up at the stick/tool you are trying to guide them with.
I like them, they have character, are only small (2-3cm) but look like they mean business and often do, I'll get some defensive pics further down the track, gotta let them settle in.
The 2 sets of pics were taken 1.5 hrs apart, 1st pair just after tipping them in, the female took off to dip in the corner and was still there for the 2nd pic of her.
By the way the big things at the mouth aren't the fangs just the jaws, the fangs were retracted and hidden for those pics, do a google of mouse spider and you'll get to see what they look like in defensive posture, they are fearsome looking.
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