Do tarantulas really "get used" to being handled?

[spiderengineer]

It seems like the majority of people that have reached some sort of "understanding" with their tarantula have done so with their Avicularia, or their B. albopilosum, or some other similarly placid species. How come you aren't bff with your Psalmos, H. macs, Poecis, or P. murinus? Personally, I think it's because, in addition to being more defensive species, they're simply tarantulas, and don't give flying hoot who or what is holding them.

this right here I think they only true way to see if T's can be condition is to try training a more defensive T and see if they can get used to you. obliviously their is inherent risk and I doubt anybody would try. I just feel that to truly prove this you need to show it in a more defensive T and show it going from being a non touching one to one that can be pick out with out any prep time.

 

[Litoria]

It's biology (Information source: University of Szeged, Hungary). They have chemoreceptors on their hairs. Spiders use this to navigate, to locate dead prey, to tell them apart, to find mate, etc. The sentence "Tarantulas will know exactly who they walk on" is true, they will recognise you as a big living organism from the organic chemicals you are made of and the slight movements you do unconsciously. Everyone's taste is a little different, different enough for them to make distinction. It's like mapping and recognition of the environment. They will remember their burrows and they can remember you as a living part of the environment. It's not a "personal" experience for them, you are just another regular stimulus from the outside. The shorter memory of the younger spiders is based on my experience. Maybe it's to ensure young spiders get far enough from their parents by the time they mature, or it's just the maturity of their nervous system. Strangely enough they can occasionally forget you all of a sudden after a molt... maybe neural damage during molt?

 

[ragnarokxg]

this right here I think they only true way to see if T's can be condition is to try training a more defensive T and see if they can get used to you. obliviously their is inherent risk and I doubt anybody would try. I just feel that to truly prove this you need to show it in a more defensive T and show it going from being a non touching one to one that can be pick out with out any prep time.

Well I am doing this with a pair of psalmo slings that I have. Right now they are nearing a molt, soon hopefully but once they molt I will resume handling again.

 

[Tarac]

It's biology (Information source: University of Szeged, Hungary). They have chemoreceptors on their hairs. Spiders use this to navigate, to locate dead prey, to tell them apart, to find mate, etc. The sentence "Tarantulas will know exactly who they walk on" is true, they will recognise you as a big living organism from the organic chemicals you are made of and the slight movements you do unconsciously. Everyone's taste is a little different, different enough for them to make distinction. It's like mapping and recognition of the environment. They will remember their burrows and they can remember you as a living part of the environment. It's not a "personal" experience for them, you are just another regular stimulus from the outside. The shorter memory of the younger spiders is based on my experience. Maybe it's to ensure young spiders get far enough from their parents by the time they mature, or it's just the maturity of their nervous system. Strangely enough they can occasionally forget you all of a sudden after a molt... maybe neural damage during molt?

There is an easier explanation that fits their biology better right here in what you are saying. If they can detect everything via their hairs they have no need to remember because, just like ants and many other inverts, they can simply follow the "scent" trails back to their burrows. They can use the cues they have adapted to their lifestyles to tell them what they need to know so they don't have to haul around a massive brain to function like we do.

On memory- you need to provide a real citation for that, not just a university name. I can easily say that's obviously wrong because Harvard University, USA said so

Unless you mean that they have certain neurological pathways reinforced from repeated stimulus, but that is what conditioning is- reflex response to a stimulus you encounter a lot. It does not support the idea of classical memory. How do you judge that a young spider has a short memory and an old one has accrued any information beyond reflex based on the stimuli it encounters. The other thing you are assuming is that kinds of signals tarantulas are receiving are enough for them to distinguish "exactly who they walk on" which is also not able to be substantiated since we don't know. The one thing we do know is the most animals don't sense things that aren't useful to their survival, hence tarantulas virtually can't see but jumping spiders can see very well. Detecting that we are large and alive is quite enough to know that we are potentially dangerous. A spider conditioned not to fear people may also not be immediately startled by a chimp or gorilla which would no doubt eat it if given the chance in the wild.

To say "exactly" who they walk on is quite a stretch. It requires imagining what sensations they can distinguish which does not validate anything. For instance, can they smell like we do? Or taste like we do? What about us are they exactly in tuned with that makes them able to tell I am not my brother or my neighbor? We can't assume to know what they do and don't sense other than it would be really shocking if it were anything other than the fundamental senses required for surviving in the wild, which is also what we have believe it or not. We don't have senses that are not to our benefit- ever wonder why we don't see UV light but so many other things do? Or why our sense of smell is pretty crappy in the scheme of things? Or why we don't have an ability to orient ourselves using magnetic fields? For tarantulas, distinguishing large potential predators from one another is not a useful skill in the wild- we are all an issue in that sense, if only because we may crush it with our feet. No need to ask yourself if bear A is nice but bear B is a tarantula eater. Just get the heck out of there! Hence we have hides and burrows, places to retreat. And they do almost without exception retreat until they are conditioned not to by never encountering anything large and threatening- exceptions would be those which have a stronger motivation (i.e. wandering mature males) or those which live in places that don't have those kinds of threats to begin with, like some of our Chilean species which may see a bird or two in their life. Probably a lot of the straight up desert spiders are like this since most deserts can't support large predators, at least not in any significant number to a population of spiders. But even still, regardless of conditioning efforts, many will retain that flight response. It's not memory, it's practical application of one's senses.

Here is an example- I am calm when I handle my Ts. If my docile T took a vacation to stay with another calm person in Thailand who also handles tarantulas regularly, would it be able to tell that person was not me and actually intended to fry and consume it? No. They don't forget or remember you, they just respond to you based on the way their network was trained to light up through conditioning or not light due to lack of necessity.

---------- Post added 12-19-2012 at 08:42 PM ----------

Well I am doing this with a pair of psalmo slings that I have. Right now they are nearing a molt, soon hopefully but once they molt I will resume handling again.

To design a meaningful experiment you have to have decent numbers and solid controls. Try with at least 20 and handle half and treat the others the same- minimal interaction, just the basic necessities. There is no doubt in my mind that they can be conditioned by simple analogues found in nature, almost all orders of life that have ever been investigated demonstrate that conditioning is possible. I can't think of an example of one that can't- even nematodes and worms can be conditioned. Can they be tamed through remembering their owner, well that is a whole other ball park. It is extremely difficult to design a meaningful experiment to measure cognitive abilities. That is largely why we, to this day, have a very limited understanding of the intelligence of any animal. How do you test intelligence when we don't know what things are useful for an animal to know or how they express their aptitude or lack thereof? It's very tricky. Good luck though, you never know what you might find out. Be careful interpreting your results.