appetite survey

[BigBadConrad]

hungriest species?

What is your hungriest T and what species do you think is the biggest eater? I've had a 4" parahybana and a 6" blondi for a few weeks now and man they are eating me out of house and home. I spend more on their lunches than my own LOL. They both have a hollow leg, err, eight of them. I also got a 4" geniculata at the same time, but it's in pre-molt. I hear they are also gluttons, though.

-John

 

[Critterfarm]

I generally feed my T's "all you can eat" once a month. Juvies and potential mothers excepted. My Pterinochilus sp. will eat 3 - 5 zoophobes or equivalent in crix. and my Haplopelma sp. eat a bit more. I'm sure all those with big ass honkin New Worlders will put my T's to shame at the dinner table

 

[G_Wright]

My biggest eater has to be my N coloratovillosus she never stops eating she'll stop eating two weeks coming up to a moult but thats it and shes about 6 1/2 inches

 

[bodc21]

my lasiodora difficilis

 

[T-Virus]

In sheer volume, I would have to go with my Blondi. She will eat 1 - 2 rat pups and 6 - 10 pinkies in a week.
IF just crickets I would say my G.Rosea (she is a surprisingly large eater).

 

[metzgerzoo]

Most of my Ts are slings except for my rosie. As far as size goes, my P.murins 2 inch will eat half a meal worm, as will my 1 inch C.fasciatum, it pounces on a meal every time unless it's fixing to mot. My GBB hasn't eaten much as it's been in pre molt for several weeks and finally molted, so we'll see. The others just kind of pick and choose. My rosie can be quite the pig. She's a good 4 inches and has a butt the size of Texas. She's always been one to never pass on the "all you can eat" specials. She'll eat on average 5 crickts in a sitting or 2 large meal worms. She's picky about pinkies though, she only eats the butts. I guess she likes "rump roast".;P She stuffed herself back in November of last year right before she layed her egg sac and is now doing the same thing...err, was, she stopped eating a few days ago and is cleaning everything out of her hide, including the meal worm we thought she had eaten. We're thinking she's fixing to lay another sac, given her behavior as it's identical to what she did in December. So, the pig in our house is probably a tie between our G.rosea and our C.fasciatum.

 

[readingbabelfis]

I would say since my B. Smithi molted, it is my hungriest t, however, my H. Lividum puts up a good fight and eats often. My slings usually eat every day or every other but of my slings, my haitian brown eats like a horse, it eats just about everything I throw in, its about 1.25 inches.

 

[Code Monkey]

Best eater I've ever dealt with are my A. geniculata. Their pre-moult fasts can practically be measured in hours instead of days and they're always looking for something to eat.

 

[Bothrops]

My T. blondi and my A. sternalis

 

[Ryan Bridgman]

I bought a juvenile curlyhair a couple of days ago and it eats anything I put in there. So far today she has eaten 9 medium brown crickets and she ate 4 yesterday! She has yet to refuse a meal!

 

[BigBadConrad]

Thanks, now I know which species to avoid if I'm short on food money. Can you use food stamps for crickets and pinkies? If you have several big T's you should be able to apply for them, dammit.

Ryan, I don't think you can count the first few days when a T is still putting on the "freshman 15", you gotta see what the baseline hunger level is LOL.

-John

 

[Tarantula]

My:

Acanthoscurria geniculata
Avicularia sp. "metallica?"
Chromatopelma cyaneopubescens
Ephebopus murinus
Nandhu carapoensis
Megaphobema robustum
Theraphosa blondi

all are adult exept the Avic

 

[John Apple]

My acanthoscurria chacoana female ...she is 6 years old ..proven and about 7.5 inches and still eats like a juvie

 

[Kevo]

B vagans hands down, troth master....:}

 

[Kumalo]

Hi,

I hope you all know that feeding " as much as possible " decreases your spiders life span.

I feed once a month one roach to one adult spider.

Two articles about food and life expectance:

Dietary restriction and aging: comparative tests of evolutionary hypotheses.

Kirk KL.

Department of Biology, New Mexico Tech, Socorro 87801, USA. klkirk@nmt.edu

Dietary restriction (DR) increases life span in many types of animals. The response to chronic DR may be an adaptation to environments with variable food levels. This study uses the comparative method to test evolutionary predictions about the origin of the response to DR, using data from 10 species of rotifers. Most species, but not all, responded to DR by increasing mean life span, maximum life span, reproductive life span, mortality rate doubling time, and initial mortality rate. Interspecific comparisons did not show the predicted correlations between the strength of the response to DR and either reproductive life span, age of first reproduction, or total reproduction. There was support for the idea that the response to chronic DR is associated with changes in reproductive allocation during short-term periods of starvation: species that reduced reproduction when starved increased their life spans under DR, whereas species that continued to reproduce when starved decreased their life spans under DR.

Calorie restriction and aging: a life-history analysis.

Shanley DP, Kirkwood TB.

University of Newcastle, Institute for the Health of the Elderly, Wolfson Research Centre, Newcastle General Hospital, Newcastle Upon Tyne, United Kingdom. daryl.shanley@ncl.ac.uk

The disposable soma theory suggests that aging occurs because natural selection favors a strategy in which fewer resources are invested in somatic maintenance than are necessary for indefinite survival. However, laboratory rodents on calorie-restricted diets have extended life spans and retarded aging. One hypothesis is that this is an adaptive response involving a shift of resources during short periods of famine away from reproduction and toward increased somatic maintenance. The potential benefit is that the animal gains an increased chance of survival with a reduced intrinsic rate of senescence, thereby permitting reproductive value to be preserved for when the famine is over. We describe a mathematical life-history model of dynamic resource allocation that tests this idea. Senescence is modeled as a change in state that depends on the resources allocated to maintenance. Individuals are assumed to allocate the available resources to maximize the total number of descendants. The model shows that the evolutionary hypothesis is plausible and identifies two factors, both likely to exist, that favor this conclusion. These factors are that survival of juveniles is reduced during periods of famine and that the organism needs to pay an energetic "overhead" before any litter of offspring can be produced. If neither of these conditions holds, there is no evolutionary advantage to be gained from switching extra resources to maintenance. The model provides a basis to evaluate whether the life-extending effects of calorie-restriction might apply in other species, including humans.


greetings,
Philipp

 

[Code Monkey]

Originally posted by Kumalo
I hope you all know that feeding " as much as possible " decreases your spiders life span.

Yes, and I've pointed it out repeatedly on this board. Most people don't seem to care.

Still, I think that worrying about the difference between 8 versus 12 years for some of the "short" lived spiders isn't really worth the worry when they're easily replaced in most cases and not something you have an emotional connection to.

And if you're worried about it with something like an American Aphonopelma, you need your head examined. My Aphonopelma slings will outlive me if they're female.

 

[manville]

I dont have any huge eaters right now they all stop eating for a while sometimes

 

[Aragorn]

My B. smithi sling eats tons of crickets!! That thing is an eating machine!

 

[caligulathegod]

mmmm....toasty.

 

[Sheri]

My A. geniculata is by far my best eater.
As for decreasing the life span, I enjoy feeding them - watching them pounce and stalk. So for now, I would rather take the style that gives me as much pleasure from them as possible.