They can be quite docile as long as you handle them gently and sparingly. Chilean rose haired are an okay starter, but I think Mexican redknees are prettier (I'm sorry, roses, you are still lovely) and easier keepers, although they do tend to flick urticating hairs on you if you startle them. Theirs are not especially itchy/irritating for most people, but it will probably happen to you at some point. Goldknees are great starters too, being easy keepers, large, and docile, but from what I understand they're a bit harder to come by. All of my experience comes from keeping them as a handler in a science museum setting, not from personally owning them, if that influences anything, I guess.
No, we didn't have any - most of the animals we had needed to be calm and harmless enough to show to children to teach them about animals.
so i guess the blue ones are too tetchy to make good beginner pets, eh? sorrow. :( not that i can have a spider right now, or any pet that a cat might harrass. since i have four cats. but my friend mark got the nickname 'spider' by being very into them, he's the reason i learned to love them -- i was never afraid of them, they were just less interesting to me than shinier bugs like scarabs and dragonflies -- because he had tarantulas and they were just so sweet and nice! i forget what his rosehair was named, something out of gaiman i think? anyway, i had a traumatic experience as a kid where someone dropped the class tarantula and it split open and died, so i couldn't bring myself to hold the rosehair lest i drop her, so he'd hold her and let me investigate. i'd touch her little furry-pointy feet, and let her investigate my fingers, and pet her back a little. she never flicked hairs at me, he said they don't grow back til the next molt so she's economical with them, only flicks them at real threats like a neighbor's dog sniffing too close. poor dog's itchy nose. :D
When people talk about "beginner" or "easy" tarantulas, it's a bit deceptive. They're usually mashing 2 categories together into one: how easy they are to keep healthy in captivity, and how well they tolerate being handled. Cobalt blues are, as far as I know, not difficult keepers, but they are jittery and not great for holding (and they're somewhat venomous, afaik). So if you want a spider you can handle, they're not a good choice. If you don't mind having them as a pet that you pretty much just watch, then it's not necessarily a bad starter. Chilean rose haireds, Mexican redknees, and golden knees are "easy keepers" in both senses of the word, so that's why they're often recommended for people who haven't kept arthropods before.
hmm, sorta tempted to get a blue and just give it a terrarium with lots of plants to live in. if they're not so aggressive that it'd give me grief maintaining its habitat, that'd be pretty great.
spiders **_** i used to have the dog seeing a bouncy ball reaction to them, until my mom showed me her spider brooches, so i could take a calm and closer look to see what they looked like (that was before internet times), and ever since them i love spiders. theyre so graceful **_** and sometimes stupid and weave their nets under the faucet. put them under the furniture, darlings, where i wont accidentally disturb you!
Oh boy it's that time of year again! When the Tegenaria/Eritagena spiders get a bit frisky and decide to go on a quest for a mate. I have literally just chased a T. domestica fifteen ways across my living room floor while uttering phrases like "darling, don't be silly" and "no, my knee is not for hiding under" while my husband hopped anxiously in the background making occasional retching noises. The silly bugger (the spider, not the husband) ended up going into a vent in the cat box and we had to tip it out. Just as I was typing this, my husband went into the bathroom and a lovely handsome specimen of Eritagena atrica (the spider formerly known as Tegenaria duellica/gigantea) ran over his bare foot. The strangled half-scream alerted me and I had to put another hopeful suitor out in the cold. :( As a note, I much prefer dealing with E. atrica, they are larger but generally more chill and handle-able. T. domestica is smaller and whizzy, turns on a dime, and is panicky as all hell - they are bloody fast! At least I got to them before the cat did - I hate finding a mangled corpse and a proudly, noisily mewing kitty expecting praise.
aww, that was a cute video! it's interesting that the chill european version is so closely related to the american hobo spider, which is a jerk.
Aaaah, I love spiders, I used to handle the orb weavers outside my house all the time when I was a kid. They are so friendly and beautiful! ETA: They were the yellow garden type, I think.
spides! i had a pet tarantula a few years ago that i adored, and there's currently a cat face spider living outside my entryway window who is just gorgeous
Deliberately immersing myself in spider positive things to help get over the arachnophobia! Didn't realize the peacock spider was an Australian native. Makes hellmurder island a little more tolerable. Can someone point out something positive about this one here? They're the ones that scare me the most. This is an Australian Wolf Spider, and they can get like. Palm sized with legs spread. They like living in corners. The mothers carry the babies on their backs for the first few weeks of life.
Spiders are little fuzzy babies who eat annoying insects and make art for you to show off to company in your house! Sure, maybe they forgot to ask first, but it was all good intentions, y'know. :)
wolf spiders are pretty chill. they'll run from you, but they won't bite you unless you really harrass them, and even then it's like a bee sting. (can be fatal to cats and dogs tho, so don't let your critters hunt them!) they don't actually like to live indoors, so if you find them and evict them they're not likely to sneak back in the next night. unless your home is the only source of water around or something. i read up on australian wolf spiders a bit, and it turns out they're one of the very few successful predators of the invasive cane toad. so there's a reason to appreciate them, even if you don't want them for roomies. :) personally i think it's really sweet how they carry their babies around, too.
Wolf spiders were one of the species I first looked at when desensitising myself to all things eight-legged. I love their goofy li'l faces!
I love spiders, they are cute and good i like jumpy spiders, I have a particular fondness for red headed mouse spiders, because I have an oc based off of them, but i love all spiders. except when they're in my shower, because baby no, get out of here you might drown and then I cannot shower comfortably for wanting to protect all the spideys.
i have a shower spider and i often have to chase her up the shower curtain before i turn the water on so she doesn't get washed down the drain :( :( but she does such a good job of eating fruit flies! (seriously why do we have so many fruit flies it's been weeks since we tossed out the elderly oranges)
my house had a pretty ridiculous fruit fly problem for a while there, and idk HOW but it contributed to many adorable spiders all around the house, and that is V Good there's quite a few in the bathroom which, pls leave before you die, but there's also a bunch in our big living room. many nice corners for them.
