Isn't it impossible to tame a Tarantula?

[MexicanRedKnee]

No you're right. "training" would be the wrong word for the effects of selective breeding. "taming" would be a better word, and i don't think it really would even count for the sake of this thread. I was throwing that in there to re-emphasize the capacity a tarantula has for "getting used to us."

although, I must say.... if i had the money and the resources (and the ability to kill all of the ferocious Ts), selective breeding to see if you could actually alter the demeanor of a particular breed would be uber interesting!


ability to kill meaning.... i would feel guilty and cry myself to sleep every night.

Why would you need to kill the ferocious T's? Why not just give them away or sell them and breed your tamer ones? I would never want such T's though, I want my spiders to be as wild as possible and if someone were to produce an essentially domesticated T, I wouldn't want any. I'm sure many others would agree.

Thanks for all the facts and opinions. Despite the efforts of some to turn this thread into another handling thread. Now for my opinions on what was said:

1. Basically I learned that T's have a very limited capacity to learn, and don't remember for long, makes sense.

2. Some people argued that a population of T's can be tamed, or essentially domesticated. That may or may not be true, I read of an experiment in Russia years ago where they took some wild foxes and in only a matter of 30 years or so basically domesticated them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox . I think that if you were to attempt the same experiment with T's, it would take much much longer if it was even possible. Not only because T's take longer to mature, but also because behavior in T's seems to be all hardwired in them. It's all instinct, unlike dogs where much of their behavior is learned. It would be like trying to breed the foxes so that the newborn pups wouldn't immediately suckle when they were born, which is instinct. That would take much longer or probably be impossible.

3. I don't believe that preparing and maintaining a burrow or altering their environment before molting is good proof of intelligence either, it seems like it's all predictable hardwired instinct to me. The spider is just acting upon its instinct.

 

[Merfolk]

As for ANYTHING that was learned getting passed down through genetics..
show me ONE just ONE paper that suggests this. PLEASE....

They are many proposal of that sort, sadly the one I remember best comes from fiction.

There is a scene in the novel "Congo" by Crichton where a tame gorilla draws image of the jungle (including archaeological ruins) seen by its mom and other ascendant prior to its birth (that gorilla itself never saw the forest, being born while her mother was in captivity waiting to be butchered for meat).
I know that Crichton got that from "scientific" sources and rarely goes far from actual science into fiction, but I just don't remember what his source was. If this happens to be plausible in real life, this would be extraordinary.

Another thing loosely related but that was totally proven by hard science : Some animals got to learn a maze, then they were sacrificed and their brains fed to other untrained individuals, which found their way out almost instantly. I know for sure it worked with flatworm, I think that it went up to mammals like rats.

So it would be possible to transmit information outside the regular channels that we call our senses. But in this case, we are pretty much in the same position than early scientists who proved that fire needs oxygen, but couldn't tell why!

 

[Xian]

Another thing loosely related but that was totally proven by hard science : Some animals got to learn a maze, then they were sacrificed and their brains fed to other untrained individuals, which found their way out almost instantly. I know for sure it worked with flatworm, I think that it went up to mammals like rats.

I'd like you to specify your sources for this, if you could.

 

[splangy]

Why would you need to kill the ferocious T's? Why not just give them away or sell them and breed your tamer ones? I would never want such T's though, I want my spiders to be as wild as possible and if someone were to produce an essentially domesticated T, I wouldn't want any. I'm sure many others would agree.

idk. getting rid of 998 Ts would be tedious. This is all hypotehtical. don't take me too literally here!

2. Some people argued that a population of T's can be tamed, or essentially domesticated. That may or may not be true, I read of an experiment in Russia years ago where they took some wild foxes and in only a matter of 30 years or so basically domesticated them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domesticated_silver_fox . I think that if you were to attempt the same experiment with T's, it would take much much longer if it was even possible. Not only because T's take longer to mature, but also because behavior in T's seems to be all hardwired in them. It's all instinct, unlike dogs where much of their behavior is learned. It would be like trying to breed the foxes so that the newborn pups wouldn't immediately suckle when they were born, which is instinct. That would take much longer or probably be impossible.

I agree, especially since foxes are pack animals, and so already possess some social mechanics to build from.

3. I don't believe that preparing and maintaining a burrow or altering their environment before molting is good proof of intelligence either, it seems like it's all predictable hardwired instinct to me. The spider is just acting upon its instinct.

That's going off of some current sociobiological perspectives on intelligence. I'm just spitting back what I've learned from that. Part of it is hardwired, but every situation will be different, and the spider does something different depending on the situation. A rosea is a great example, they make decisions about where to burrow, whether to burrow, how deep to burrow, etc. It's not an automatic... "burrow here," sort of a thing. There's an actual thought process going on. The fact that we can't predict much of their behavior is a red flag for the existence of thought.

If you're interested, check out the SETI podcast. They had a great episode on animal intelligence. http://radio.seti.org/episodes/You_Animal_ It's a FANTASTIC show, I highly recommend giving it a listen.

 

[Merfolk]

I'd like you to specify your sources for this, if you could.

I actually read it in a text lent to me by a fellow teacher. I will make some search. I came across this several times to be honest.

If any of this had scientific basis, it would explain the widespread believe among cannibal tribes that they could acquire the qualities of their last meal...

Genetic memory? I'm hitting encyclopaedias...

 

[Falk]

A tarantula dont have any social mechanics and are totaly solitary animals and therefore cannot be tame.

 

[Merfolk]

A tarantula dont have any social mechanics and are totaly solitary animals and therefore cannot be tame.

Well, they do, they even play the drums to seduce their partner

Speaking of genetic memory..tadam!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_memory_(psychology)

As for the flatworms (from new world encyclopedia):

"In 1955, Thompson and McConnell conditioned planarian flatworms by pairing a bright light with an electric shock. After repeating this several times, they took away the electric shock, and only exposed them to the bright light. The flatworms would react to the bright light as if they had been shocked. Thompson and McConnell found that if they cut the worm in two, and allowed both worms to regenerate each half would develop the light-shock reaction.

In 1962, McConnell repeated the experiment, but instead of cutting the trained flatworms in two he ground them into small pieces and fed them to other flatworms. Incredibility, these flatworms learned to associate the bright light with a shock much faster than flatworms who has not been fed trained worms."

The taxt says further that it failed with other animals and that the phenomenon wasn't constant. Very cool to know thoug!!!!

 

[Xian]

Well, they do, they even play the drums to seduce their partner

Speaking of genetic memory..tadam!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_memory_(psychology)

As for the flatworms (from new world encyclopedia):

"In 1955, Thompson and McConnell conditioned planarian flatworms by pairing a bright light with an electric shock. After repeating this several times, they took away the electric shock, and only exposed them to the bright light. The flatworms would react to the bright light as if they had been shocked. Thompson and McConnell found that if they cut the worm in two, and allowed both worms to regenerate each half would develop the light-shock reaction.

In 1962, McConnell repeated the experiment, but instead of cutting the trained flatworms in two he ground them into small pieces and fed them to other flatworms. Incredibility, these flatworms learned to associate the bright light with a shock much faster than flatworms who has not been fed trained worms."

The taxt says further that it failed with other animals and that the phenomenon wasn't constant. Very cool to know thoug!!!!

Thanks for looking that up! That is quite the deal!

 

[splangy]

Interesting...

I don't think eating the body parts of another animal can necessarily change the DNA (unless they're... radioactive or something...) But there is this possible explanation:

Stein interpreted this as showing that 'transfer' was not memory specific, rather, apparent changes in behaviour or learning-rate could be attributed to stress hormones transferred between donors and recipients.

http://www.dur.ac.uk/robert.kentridge/bpp2mem1.html

But then this on Wikipedia...

This experiment intended to show that memory could perhaps be transferred chemically. The experiment was repeated with mice, fish, and rats, but it always failed to produce the same results. The perceived explanation was that rather than memory being transferred to the other animals, it was the hormones in the ingested ground animals that changed its behaviour. McConnell believed that this was evidence of a chemical basis for memory, which he identified as memory RNA. McConnell's results are now attributed to observer bias.No double-blind experiment has ever reproduced his results.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planarian

This is becoming super interesting! Thanks to everybody that's presenting this stuff!

 

[xhexdx]

1962? At what point do the experiments become void until repeated?

That's really strange, and makes no sense to me...

EDIT: Just saw the last two posts. Yes, very interesting.

 

[Merfolk]

Since it's been witnessed (this isn't the only account, elsewhere it was a maze),there might be a plausibility, but also perhaps such transmission needs a combination with another factor (yet unknown) to work. Some phenomenons need a specific set of circumstances to occur, hence they are rarely witnessed.

 

[DooM_ShrooM]

some of us think that they can be thought .....but for them to learn they should have more larger brain maybe larger than them itself but for that to happen you need more bigger body for them to sustain the brains weight ....so in other words you should catch a really really big T just so you could train it ..but im not saying that you can train a goliath bird eating tarantula i meant a T bigger than a dog or bigger than you....

 

[Merfolk]

The tiny Portia jumping spiders are able to learn the "body language" of struggling preys to attract specific spiders onto which they feed. They could even learn movement from species that don't occur in their environment. Other animals with far larger brains are unable to achieve half of it. So the brain's mass isn't the sole factor...

I think that they simply are parameters that we don't understand yet. Like, some people believe that not all of a creature's "intelligence" resides in its brain but also in some sort of magnetic field surrounding it. (A bit like those who believe in the aura or kirlian experiments.) This perhaps explain why you feel differently facing different people, or why a T will calm down with one handler and rear up with another... that famous sixth sense!!!!


Right now it's more parapsychology than anything else, yet the concept of stocking data within a pure magnetic field is plausible. I keep my mind open without going too esoteric... Much of what looks normal today would have been dubbed witchcraft 200 years ago. Then, I surely wouldn't even believe in electricity!!! So many things that I though fantastic in the 70's occur now. Time will tell what's true and what's phoney.

 

[Zoltan]

Draychen, sorry, dude, but what you posted is completely fiction. First of all, nothing learns by genetic inheritence. They are two completely different things. If the animal inherits something, it doesn't learn that something, it inherits it (e.g. patellar reflex in humans). If it learns something, it doesn't inherit that something, it learns it. It's only basic logic. I mean, think for a second about what you posted, not only that isn't true for tarantulas, it's not even true for humans! Otherwise why would children need to learn to write/read (plus a million of other examples), why don't they just inherit the ability? :?

The tiny Portia jumping spiders are able to learn the "body language" of struggling preys to attract specific spiders onto which they feed. They could even learn movement from species that don't occur in their environment.

And how is that possible? Jumping spiders are psychics?

 

[curiousme]

Draychen, sorry, dude, but what you posted is completely fiction. First of all, nothing learns by genetic inheritence. They are two completely different things. If the animal inherits something, it doesn't learn that something, it inherits it (e.g. patellar reflex in humans). If it learns something, it doesn't inherit that something, it learns it. It's only basic logic. I mean, think for a second about what you posted, not only that isn't true for tarantulas, it's not even true for humans! Otherwise why would children need to learn to write/read (plus a million of other examples), why don't they just inherit the ability? :?

Our thoughts are one on this. It just doesn't make sense.:?

And how is that possible? Jumping spiders are psychics?

Didn't you get that memo?

 

[Kirk]

My apologies for the double post: I was editing and something went wrong. Anyhow, Tarantulas learn by genetic inheritance. At birth, they come pre-programed with the basics of survival and have limited a limited capicity to learn. HOWEVER, a they do learn, the mothers pass on this aquired information to their young! In the end, the more information learned, the more 'outdated' information is kicked out of their brains.. to then be passed on down again and again. Scientific conjecture would then state: If you kept a mother T in a controlled enviornment and subjected her to differing stimuli, she would in turn pass what she can collect, to her young. Split those Ts up (let's say 2 for example): Keep one female in the same enviornment, and the other in an uncontrolled enviornment. Gradually, over time the Ts continually placed inside the controlled enviornment would lose much of their ability to survive in the wild, but will adapt to her new enviornment. Meanwhile, the Ts inside the uncontrolled encloseure would retain and regain the information to survive in theirs... though it may take each a few birthing cycles to obtain this effect.

The stimuli for example would be things like electro-shock in certain areas. Climbing in certain places to recieve food etc etc. There are many types of stimuli that can be used to effect this. These are just a few examples. The basic portions of their brains function like many creatures.. except so far as science has been able to prove, that is pretty much the extent of it. So, you could train a T (based on conjecture).. but it wouldn't be the T you started with.. it would probably be around the 2nd or 3rd generation babies.


Edit: Basically, mentally through their children, they will adapt extremely quickly to their new sorroundings. Faster than many other creatures.

I wish I had taped the episode. (I'm a Discovery/Animal Planet/History freak ESPECIALLY when it deals with Ts!)

I hope you can get a refund from the school you attended, because they failed to teach you basic biology. You might wish to read up on current evolutionary biology and the basics of inheritance. Larmarkism died in the 19th century.