- Joined
- Aug 23, 2007
- Messages
- 75
A sad one for me but it’s important to leave this record here on AB.
I removed this tissue from the abdomen of an adult female P. irminia last night. It's about the size of a single rice grain, little bit thicker.
I noticed a yellowish jelly-like fluid stuck between her 4th leg and abdomen, but didn’t see any injury. During a closer look, after cleaning the fluid, I finally was able to find a small tear with a soft but solid tissue starting to spill out. At first, I tried pushing it back in, but that didn’t work. I decided to pull out what was already exposed in order to stop the leakage immediately . From what I’ve looked up, there’s a chance it could be a oviduct or maybe something tied to her digestive system.
For the past two weeks she had been spending most of her time outside her hide, which wasn’t usual. I noticed this, but there was nothing externally indicating something was wrong. I checked the burrow to see if there was anything bothering her, but nothing unusual. There was no fall, no crickets left in the terrarium that could have caused any damage, and nothing sharp that could have caused a perforation.
Putting the pieces together, I think something was happening internally, causing discomfort, making her more restless. Some kind of pressure that ended up causing that region to rupture, pushing things out.
One detail worth mentioning: she was paired on 02/01, a month ago.
The rupture is super close to where the abdomen meets the cephalothorax. This picture was taken after the "treatment":
Needless to say she won’t survive. Obviously. She’s alive still but will likely die in the next few hours, completely lethargic.
If this diagram is correct, what I circled in it looks pretty similar to what was removed.
The whole thing sucked. From the moment I decided to remove that thing I knew all hopes were gone.
Anyway, sharing this on the forum is a way to get something positive out of all this I guess.
And, of course, if any of you know what this tissue or organ might be, or if you’ve gone through something like this before, I’d love to get your input
I removed this tissue from the abdomen of an adult female P. irminia last night. It's about the size of a single rice grain, little bit thicker.


I noticed a yellowish jelly-like fluid stuck between her 4th leg and abdomen, but didn’t see any injury. During a closer look, after cleaning the fluid, I finally was able to find a small tear with a soft but solid tissue starting to spill out. At first, I tried pushing it back in, but that didn’t work. I decided to pull out what was already exposed in order to stop the leakage immediately . From what I’ve looked up, there’s a chance it could be a oviduct or maybe something tied to her digestive system.
For the past two weeks she had been spending most of her time outside her hide, which wasn’t usual. I noticed this, but there was nothing externally indicating something was wrong. I checked the burrow to see if there was anything bothering her, but nothing unusual. There was no fall, no crickets left in the terrarium that could have caused any damage, and nothing sharp that could have caused a perforation.
Putting the pieces together, I think something was happening internally, causing discomfort, making her more restless. Some kind of pressure that ended up causing that region to rupture, pushing things out.
One detail worth mentioning: she was paired on 02/01, a month ago.
The rupture is super close to where the abdomen meets the cephalothorax. This picture was taken after the "treatment":

Needless to say she won’t survive. Obviously. She’s alive still but will likely die in the next few hours, completely lethargic.
If this diagram is correct, what I circled in it looks pretty similar to what was removed.

The whole thing sucked. From the moment I decided to remove that thing I knew all hopes were gone.
Anyway, sharing this on the forum is a way to get something positive out of all this I guess.
And, of course, if any of you know what this tissue or organ might be, or if you’ve gone through something like this before, I’d love to get your input

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