How fast can a tarantula be?

[louise f]

Oh man.... I just watched a video about this. Sounds awful. Every part of the experience. Bite=awful Symtoms=awful Treatment=horrifying. gave me the willies. My husband, understandably, took it even worse. He was thoroughly freaked out.

Well it shouldn`t be this vid you are talking about or ??

 

[louise f]

Oh man.... I just watched a video about this. Sounds awful. Every part of the experience. Bite=awful Symtoms=awful Treatment=horrifying. gave me the willies. My husband, understandably, took it even worse. He was thoroughly freaked out.

I think there is a damn good reason why they are not allowed in Denmark

 

[Trenor]

Now a better competition would be against a snake since it has only air as the friction and doesn't have a large mass either. I suspect that a snake might win over this short distance but I don't know much on either one's measured results.

I was unable to access the actual study that was quoted in this link (I'm at work) but they mention strikes accelerating about 100 meters/sec squared and lasting less than 1/10th of a second. This was for vipers and non-venomous snakes. I found it interesting that they all struck at roughly the same speed.

Now if someone did the same for tarantulas we would know how they matched up.

 

[JumpingSpiderLady]

@louise f This was the video. I like this guy!

 

[JumpingSpiderLady]

Well it shouldn`t be this vid you are talking about or ??

Oh my. That is silly.

 

[louise f]

Oh my. That is silly.

Yeah, i dont know if you really should believe this or not. It sounds more like they are blowing it all up.

 

[Matabuey]

I'll even go so far to suspect (I don't bet - ) that a Tarantula will win a very short race against almost all much larger land mammals over the distance at which a T might suddenly bite a person - 6 or 7 inches.

Now a better competition would be against a snake since it has only air as the friction and doesn't have a large mass either. I suspect that a snake might win over this short distance but I don't know much on either one's measured results.

No, and no lol.

You cannot compare a T doing 6 inches to a Cheetah doing 6 inches. They're two different sizes. Which is why i stated it in body lengths per second.

But if you want to model them as particles, the Cheetah is still covering much more ground in the same time frame. The Tarantulas acceleration is not anywhere near to that of the Cheetah, from a standing start.

If you model them as particles disregarding their size only taking into account their acceleration, you can use equations of motion for uniform acceleration, it takes this Tarantula to cover 1 inch - 0.13 seconds, and the Cheetah would take - 0.075 seconds.

The rattlesnake being even faster than the two, covering 1 inch in 0.014 seconds.

 

[Jeff23]

I was unable to access the actual study that was quoted in this link (I'm at work) but they mention strikes accelerating about 100 meters/sec squared and lasting less than 1/10th of a second. This was for vipers and non-venomous snakes. I found it interesting that they all struck at roughly the same speed.

Now if someone did the same for tarantulas we would know how they matched up.

That is fast. I suspect the snake is much faster than a T if both are poised and ready to strike a target.

EDIT* But it would be nice to see numbers

 

[Jeff23]

No, and no lol.

You cannot compare a T doing 6 inches to a Cheetah doing 6 inches. They're two different sizes. Which is why i stated it in body lengths per second.

But if you want to model them as particles, the Cheetah is still covering much more ground in the same time frame. The Tarantulas acceleration is not anywhere near to that of the Cheetah, from a standing start.

If you model them as particles disregarding their size only taking into account their acceleration, you can use equations of motion for uniform acceleration, it takes this Tarantula to cover 1 inch - 0.13 seconds, and the Cheetah would take - 0.075 seconds.

The rattlesnake being even faster than the two, covering 1 inch in 0.014 seconds.

Sure you can. If a T is sitting next to a Cheetah and you want to see if the Cheetah can jump/move out of the way before the T bites it you would use this distance. I suspect Cheetahs test this out all the time.

I believe that is what the initial disagreement was about on this subject. If you have your arm in the enclosure and need to out react a T we are not talking about much distance. Once you see the T moving over a longer distance it doesn't appear to be so fast. This is because it is the acceleration of the T that is so impressive, not its top speed.

 

[Matabuey]

Sure you can. If a T is sitting next to a Cheetah and you want to see if the Cheetah can jump/move out of the way before the T bites it you would use this distance. I suspect Cheetahs test this out all the time.

I believe that is what the initial disagreement was about on this subject. If you have your arm in the enclosure and need to out react a T we are not talking about much distance. Once you see the T moving over a longer distance it doesn't appear to be so fast. This is because it is the acceleration of the T that is so impressive, not its top speed.

That depends entirely on the reaction speed of said species. But in terms of pure speed, or acceleration over any distance even as small as 1cm, or comparing body lengths per second, the T is no match for a Cheetah (or lots of other animals).

I personally wouldn't say the acceleration is impressive, impressive is when a snakes accelerate it's head from 100 m/s^2 to over 270 m/s^2.

I don't even know what we are talking about anymore haha.

But yeah, they're fast for us in close proximity. But that's it. There are much faster animals in close proximity. We are pretty poor reaction wise compared to a lot of the animal kingdom, fruit flies can respond to turbulence within 5ms, which is 0.005 seconds - which is insane!

But yeah, I think I've said enough now about speeds/acceleration haha. If you want to talk more, feel free to PM me

 

[REEFSPIDER]

Averaged 267
24/m

I do work with Lattice Quantum Chromodynamics, but in all honesty it's not something i particularly enjoy. So potentially looking to change to a PhD in Astrophysics/Cosmology so i can study more interesting things (in my opinion) such as black holes.

It's actually quite easy to analyse a video if you know the length of something.

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=1089617674439405

For example this video. It is a 30 frame per second video, thus each frame is 0.033333.. seconds. If you break the video down it takes around 0.53 (16 frames) seconds for the T to get from one end to the other.

That 1 litre bottle is 30 cm tall. You need to account for the hypotenuse towards the top, as this would give an increased displacement travelled , simply drawing up a quick rough model, would give total displaced to be 31cm.

Which would equate to 1.3 mph, and an acceleration of 1.1 (1dp) m/s^2 over the 0.53 seconds. However, from analysing other videos i would propose that constant velocity is achieved as quickly as 0.2 seconds, simply by looking at the distance displaced in each frame of a video. Therefore we recalculating the acceleration over 0.2 seconds, and obtain the figure 2.9 m/s^2 (1dp)

Which is reasonably quick, but to put it into perspective Crotalus atrox can accelerate it's head towards prey at 28G = 275 m/s^2. They will not even be the fastest striking snakes either, i can put money on the fact Bitis arietans or Bothrops asper would be even faster.

Or comparing it to a Cheetah which accelerates at around 9 m/s^2.

We can also look at body lengths/sec as that's usually what people use for comparing animals of different size, for this T it would cover around 58 cm (22.8 inch) in 1 second, assuming the T is 6 inches - it would cover 3.8 body lengths. Now for the Cheetah, whose average body length is 1.3 metres, it covers 26 m/s, covering 20 body lengths.

Fun little test: http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime

I averaged 251ms, as a 25 year old. Would be interesting to see other peoples average time, with your age (be honest, not a competition). However that is under perfect conditions, where you're kind of pre-loading a motor sequence into the brain, due to expectation of the green dot appearing.

There are lots of things that would significantly slow down your ability to react promptly in real life, such as age, fatigue, distractions, etc.

Let's put this into distances just for fun

If you were sitting there knowing this T was going to come out and try to bite, sat there completely alert, and ready to move your hand the instant your brain picks up on the visual stimuli. Let's say you have average reaction times, which is 0.25, in that time this T could cover 14.5 cm. If you were any closer than that you'd be getting tagged.

If you were cleaning out some bolus and you are pretty sure the T is just hiding away and isn't too bothered by your presence, but a bite would be unexpected you'd react around 1.15 seconds (Taken from analysis of how long it takes drivers to react to unexpected visual stimuli on the road ahead, which is 1.05 seconds + 0.1 seconds to initiate an action response) - If you aren't tired, or distracted, as they'd further increase your response times. In that time this T could cover 67cm...

I am aware this is Psalmopoeus emeraldus and not an OW sp. But in my experience from having kept P.irminia, I'm pretty sure it was faster than some of the OW's i have. I would doubt, species such as T.gigas or S.calceatum are more than 10-20% faster than a Psalm. But will shall see, i will try and catch some higher framed footage of my T.gigas and S.calceatum to try and ascertain their speed to a better degree of accuracy in the near future.

I personally wouldn't call them lightening fast, but that's my opinion.

But yes, they're faster than you can react depending on your distance away.

 

[mistertim]

Well it shouldn`t be this vid you are talking about or ??

It kinda irks me that an Entomologist was calling a spider "poisonous".

 

[Scolopendra1989]

I think that the OP is a really cool topic because Ts (especially arboreals) are capable of incredible speed. In a race between a human and a tarantula, the human would win but only because of certain size variables. If you were to get rid of the variables between a human being's size and height, I'm willing to bet the tarantula can move quite a bit faster. Just as men are as strong as horses if size and body composition was taken out of the equation, tarantulas move extremely fast relative to their size.

 

[Scolopendra1989]

I really want to be an entomologist one day and I feel confident that I'm up to the challenge considering I've started research and been acquainted with insects and arachnids my whole life.

 

[hennibbale]

Fun little test: http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime

I averaged 251ms, as a 25 year old. Would be interesting to see other peoples average time, with your age (be honest, not a competition). However that is under perfect conditions, where you're kind of pre-loading a motor sequence into the brain, due to expectation of the green dot appearing.

16-year-old

 

[hennibbale]

I'd need to see some proof to show this was true before I'm willing to even entertain this. We often get wild with speculation and that's how we get telelporting Ts.


Fair enough. If you want to see how crazy some people can get with their claims check out this link.

Can they move faster then you can react? Sure, that's why you should keep your fingers where they belong and work with them expecting this.

Oh man.
I thought you were kidding when you said people seriously believed them teleporting.
Like... WHAT?!

 

[hennibbale]

16-year-old

And that's bad, mate. Gotta try this with my non-wireless mouse.

 

[Rocky]

I think stock they only run about 0-60 in 5 seconds... but put a bit of aboreal in them and your looking at another 100 AP (arachnid power) lol

 

[Matabuey]

I think that the OP is a really cool topic because Ts (especially arboreals) are capable of incredible speed. In a race between a human and a tarantula, the human would win but only because of certain size variables. If you were to get rid of the variables between a human being's size and height, I'm willing to bet the tarantula can move quite a bit faster. Just as men are as strong as horses if size and body composition was taken out of the equation, tarantulas move extremely fast relative to their size.

Compared to humans, yes. Humans aren't known for their speed, we are slow animals. If you model them as particles with their acceleration, in a race this T would cover 6 inches in 0.32s, where Usain Bolt would take 0.39s.

Obviously if the race were to be over a longer distance, humans would win because we can go much faster. Which is why comparing in this manner is kind of pointless. It's better to look at body lengths per second, as that is relative to the animals size.

Like for instance, a Hummingbird does 383 body lengths per second, compared with a fighter jet which does 150 body lengths per second.

 

[Chris LXXIX]

Humans aren't known for their speed, we are slow animals.

Yeah, because you don't know an acquaintance of mine here. He could beat Bolt hands down after all of those years of "Avoid Creditors Race Championship".