Sergic
Arachnosquire
- Joined
- Jun 5, 2015
- Messages
- 77
I'd like to propose a hypothesis that might explain some tarantula behaviors -
tarantulas sleep, and we keepers sometimes interact with them while they are sleeping. The behavior that I have observed which is in need of an explanation is that, on occasion, tarantulas will initially be resistant to being moved or fed, but will suddenly bolt, flick hairs, or lunge at the feeder after some amount of sensory input from prodding or the feeder.
I was shown this recent paper by Nath et al., which you can read here http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)31023-0
The gist is that upside down jellyfish likely sleep, and exhibit the necessary characteristics of sleep. The authors also reference other work that has shown other inverts such as C. elegans and Drosophila also likely sleep. The implication is that sleep evolved early in animals and has been conserved in many, if not most or all, animal lineages. Therefore, it is likely tarantulas sleep. If you are at all interested in this sort of topic, I highly recommend you read the paper, regardless of whether you agree tarantulas likely sleep.
From the paper, the criteria for sleep are:
tarantulas sleep, and we keepers sometimes interact with them while they are sleeping. The behavior that I have observed which is in need of an explanation is that, on occasion, tarantulas will initially be resistant to being moved or fed, but will suddenly bolt, flick hairs, or lunge at the feeder after some amount of sensory input from prodding or the feeder.
I was shown this recent paper by Nath et al., which you can read here http://www.cell.com/current-biology/fulltext/S0960-9822(17)31023-0
The gist is that upside down jellyfish likely sleep, and exhibit the necessary characteristics of sleep. The authors also reference other work that has shown other inverts such as C. elegans and Drosophila also likely sleep. The implication is that sleep evolved early in animals and has been conserved in many, if not most or all, animal lineages. Therefore, it is likely tarantulas sleep. If you are at all interested in this sort of topic, I highly recommend you read the paper, regardless of whether you agree tarantulas likely sleep.
From the paper, the criteria for sleep are:
- A quiescent state with reduced activity.
- Reduced responsiveness to stimuli.
- Full reversibility of quiescent state.
- Spider exhibits state of reduced activity. This would, admittedly, be hard to demonstrate in tarantulas without comparing something like heart rate between different times of day or night. However, even though tarantulas are usually inactive, they could have alert periods of inactivity, which would be differentiated from periods of sleep by reduced response to stimuli.
- I have noticed that at times, even generally high-strung spiders such as GBB or N. incei can be lightly prodded or closely approached by a feeder without noticeably reacting.
- In some cases where I have observed 2, after some amount of prodding or being approached by the feeder, the tarantula will react suddenly, and either run, flick hairs, or lunge at the feeder.