Anyone ever tried housing aphonopelma seemanis together?

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Vanessa

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it gets to a point after keeping, breeding and observing all you can, why not experiment granted with precaution ,,putting them together in an empty container and see how they react when they run into each other, if aggression then the particular species should not be kept together as the outcome will be what all you guys wish to happen to the seemani. if they avoid each other without aggression then why not?
It is irresponsible to encourage, or promote, putting animals in peril of being killed just because you're bored. The people who don't think your wannabe scientist, pseudo-experiments, is worth a perfectly healthy animal dying are not the ones who are a detriment to the hobby. Those bored people who feel that these animals deserve nothing more than to be treated like a disposable plaything, for someone whose interest in this hobby has disintegrated to the extent that they no longer hold any other fascination for them, are the ones who are a detriment and don't have anything of value to offer this hobby anymore.
 
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Dannica

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man
this hobby especially USA hobby, sucks and boring, overpriced ts that nobody buys and sellers jack that <edit> up just to sit on them forever, and everyone buys cheap boring stuff,
before anybody tried pokie communal people were acting just like it here, just bashing without having any thoughts or experimental minded
i used to disagree with Jacobi's blog bashing usa t hobby, but not i totally agree with him.

balfouri has known to kill in communal set up. Chicken spider from slings to maturity in tight tank they have never ate or hurt another (my friend's spiders and his observation)

there are probably other pampho that will actually do the same. who knows

like i said there are tons of species of ts and more to be found.

i have bred and kept all the slings hatched of C fimbriatus, at one point i missed their food for two weeks, they were all skinny , no fat slings here and there meaning they dont eat each other even hungry. maybe they will be different when adults?

it gets to a point after keeping, breeding and observing all you can, why not experiment granted with precaution ,,putting them together in an empty container and see how they react when they run into each other, if aggression then the particular species should not be kept together as the outcome will be what all you guys wish to happen to the seemani. if they avoid each other without aggression then why not?

what about keeping a mm into female's tank overnight, depending on species it gets eaten or live with the female....leaving it in the female tank must be very immoral and reckless too then?

i think i will start my own thread of keeping two adult ts together
I’ll ask you the same question I asked OP (didn’t get an answer but whatever). Why? What purpose does it serve? What benefits come from it?
 
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EtienneN

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Do you notice how it's always the fringe collectors who get into tarantulas because it's 'badass' or whatever and they do these things because they like to in their own words "think outside the box?" Like they think they can change the face of the tarantula hobby, getting Ts who HAVE NO BUSINESS being together with both in one enclosure which is just an accident waiting to happen. I wonder what people who have learnt the hard way would have to say about such an 'experiment'??? ALL tarantulas are opportunistic predators AND cannibalistic. It's not a matter of 'if' it's just a matter of 'when'.
 

Asgiliath

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It’s a YIKES from me dawg

It’s a YIKES from me dawg
Ya know what? I change my mind!

I’m actually inspired by this! I’m gonna throw my AF a. seemanni, juvie and slings in together. Maybe they’ll have tea.
 
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mantisfan101

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I’ve actually seen native aphonopelma living in colonies. You have an area that is saturated with borrows, I mean every few feet there is a borrow. I’ve also seen adults and baby tarantulas sharing the same borrow. The babies were clearly too large to be newborns, but still very small, I would guess around a year or so old. Does this make them communal? Probably not. Aphonopelma’s dig a borrow a basically never leave it unless one is a mature male. If you give them a large enough enclosure for each of them to dig there own borrow and live separately you may do okay. That wouldn’t be communal, just two tarantulas sharing a really large tank.
The difference between this and op's setup is that if any hostile interactions were to occur, the other t could just leave. Here, they are bound to cross paths again.

They have crossed paths multiple times and nothing has happened if you feel like I'm doing something so wrong why waste your time following this thread I've housed them together now. it's crazy how everyone predicts what will happen but have never tried to house this species together you all will feel how you feel. people cull slings bc they have to many instead of giving them away but to say I'm careless is crazy I've been monitoring them constantly since they have been in there and they seem fine to me they are eating and even exploring the enclosure running around each other and feeding without problems so if you don't like it well so be it but currently they are doing awesome but I have no hard feelings about anyone's "opinions" and it's far from a death ring I feel of that was the case they would have attacked each other by now
I've temporarily kept male betta fish together( a big no-no, but I didn't have any spare tanks atm) and they swam by each other and even seemed to follow each other with no instances of aggression. I woke up the next day and one of them was for some reason missing its fins and its stomach. I kept mantids together communally(yet another debated topic) and they never tried to eat each other and they even crawled on top of each other, sometimes molting within the same vicinity. They seemed to be doing ok so I let them stay together. Checked up on them a few weeks later to find only one big, fat mantis in the middle. Also, you just added the two T's so they need time to adjust. Keep in mind that betta fish and mantids, despite how aggressive they may seem to each other, are still much more sociable animals compared to tarantulas. We are simply saying that although what has happened so far seems ok, it's utterly inevitable that one or the other will end up eating each other. Also, T's aren't technically supposed to be "running around" and "exploring their enclosure," especially a fossorial one that's been known to spend ages inside of their burrows.
 

Venom1080

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Any species is communal if the cage is big enough. ;)

I have nothing against unpopular experiments, but this is pushing it I think.
 

Ungoliant

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Put a couple Dubias in the enclosure before falling asleep and woke up in the middle of the night to find them both out and eating they seem to be very tolerate of each other when one was finsished it went near the other that was still feeding and again no threats posture or anything of that nature. These are the sites that gave me the idea they stated that they are usually found in large aggregations and another site stated that this species lives in large communities in the wild.
http://www.petworlds.net/aphonopelma-seemanni/
https://www.thesprucepets.com/costa-rican-zebra-tarantulas-as-pets-1237349
While they may temporarily tolerate each other, I wouldn't expect it to last forever. I urge you to separate them while they are both still alive.

Housing two tarantulas in a confined space is different from having nearby burrows in the wild, where the tarantulas can flee in any direction to avoid conflict.


That's a cop out in my opinion.

Mods have no freedom to shut down a thread in such cases, ie those not violating TOS? Simply because something is allowed doesn't mean it should be allowed in such blatantly obvious cases such as this.
We don't allow trolling, but barring that, we generally don't shut down threads just because the OP is doing something that is unwise, even if he is stubbornly refusing to accept the advice of more experienced keepers.

If it gets to the point where the thread has runs its course or is overly hostile, we may lock it.
 

viper69

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While they may temporarily tolerate each other, I wouldn't expect it to last forever. I urge you to separate them while they are both still alive.

Housing two tarantulas in a confined space is different from having nearby burrows in the wild, where the tarantulas can flee in any direction to avoid conflict.




We don't allow trolling, but barring that, we generally don't shut down threads just because the OP is doing something that is unwise, even if he is stubbornly refusing to accept the advice of more experienced keepers.

If it gets to the point where the thread has runs its course or is overly hostile, we may lock it.

I see now. Thanks for the clarification!
 

Urzeitmensch

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I’ve actually seen native aphonopelma living in colonies. You have an area that is saturated with borrows, I mean every few feet there is a borrow. I’ve also seen adults and baby tarantulas sharing the same borrow. The babies were clearly too large to be newborns, but still very small, I would guess around a year or so old. Does this make them communal? Probably not. Aphonopelma’s dig a borrow a basically never leave it unless one is a mature male. If you give them a large enough enclosure for each of them to dig there own borrow and live separately you may do okay. That wouldn’t be communal, just two tarantulas sharing a really large tank.
Also what is often neglected with the nature observation: Just because you see several Ts living close together does not mean they don't eat each other, just that some survive. It may even be a bloody killing field for all we know.

The question I still have when reading this topic is as so many others said: "why?"

This is no scientific experiment by any standard, it has no use I can think of and it puts the Ts into grave danger. If OP is bored with his Ts I am sure he can find someone to take care of them here on the boards or elsewhere

I even ask myself if this is a troll post and one of the Ts in the original picture is either a molt or photoshopped in. My suspicion is based on a) the obviously absurd nature of the "experiment" as such and b) OP ignoring any calls for giving his reason to do this.


I sincerely hope it is a troll post.
 
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boina

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Ok, I'm a biologist (Ph.D.) with a master's degree in animal behaviour (some people around here have seen my qualifications), so here's my scientific opinion about this:

All kinds of spiders live in close proximity in nature. Resources are rare and good spots get heavily populated. Nearly all species (not only spiders, just animals in general) seem to recognize same species animals and show some tolerance towards them. However, this tolerance isn't absolute. Under optimal circumstances they usually (usually!) don't canibalize. Nevertheless, any kind of disturbance can tip the balance. That's not only hunger, that's also stress, chronic or acute. An animal that for some reason feels threatend will defend itself - and it will bite first and ask questions later, for example. Any kind of disturbance from the outside may be the trigger of this.

This "communal" experiment is in no way new. People try keeping various species of spiders together all the time, even though I don't know of anyone keeping Aphonopelmas at the moment, but the principle is the same. Those experimental "communals" usually work for a while. This while can be shorter or longer, depending on pure luck. Since nobody has ever shown individual recognition in any spider the basis for this is intraspecies recognition and tolerance - an extremely widespread concept in nature, as I said. Again, it's tolerance, not communality, and tolerance in any species of animal is fragile and open for disturbances. The risk of something - anything really - upsetting the fragile equilibrium is always a given (even after years of co-habitation) and when that happens only one spider survives.

TL;DR: This will work for however long it takes for it to not work anymore. It's a risk. I personally like my animals to survive with a higher percentage of certainty, so I won't do it.
 

GreenGoblin

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Reason is to see if they will live together without any casualties I understand that it's risky and it could end with one eating the other but hey that could happen even when breeding and if it does I'll just purchase another one even when people house M. Balfouris together they run the risk of some not making it sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't I did put them in an empty enclosure together for about a hour before I decided to finally do it I was skeptical about it at first then I did it It I'm not ashamed or hurt by any comments or opinions I'm happy that you all are voicing your opinions but if it does end up working and a couple months or even years from now they are still living together then you guys would know from my "Carelessness" that they can be house together with little to no casualties and I will not respond to every post made because regardless of my response you guys have already made up in your minds that it's going to fail.

Someone even said that this species shouldn't be roaming but they are nocturnal and when lights go out the come out then in the morning they're back in the burrows It's just a lot of negative thoughts on how everything will go i know it's a burrowing species and for space I felt that a 20 gal should be large enough for them to separate when one feels threatened
 
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boina

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but if it does end up working and a couple months or even years from now they are still living together then you guys would know from my "Carelessness" that they can be house together with little to no casualties
No. We already know that it may or may not work. An experiment with an n=1 isn't an experiment but an anecdote and isn't going to prove anything either way. There are "communals" of N. incei, for example, that worked for years and others that ended with one fat spider within weeks, or even days. There's a huge variability in this and all we will know is whether you got lucky or not.
 

FrDoc

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@Dannica has asked twice the question, “Why?” The question is not, or should not be looked upon as rhetorical. She has received no answer because there is no objectively affirmative one to be presented. The only response can be curiosity, or “because I want to do something different”. There are several reasons, both theoretical and experiential, that indicate the idea is not good. Even if it worked brilliantly, so what? You have two spiders living dangerously in one enclosure instead of two spiders living safely in two enclosures. This is just objective, unarguable fact. I have posed the philosophical question before when subjects such as this have been broached. The question ought not be, “Can I do...?” But, the question ought to be, “Should I do...?” They are apples and oranges propositions.
 

cold blood

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Reason is to see if they will live together without any casualties
But much like the diesel in the Hondas reference, we already know the answer.....you are "experimenting" with a known...not an unknown.....Putting diesel in the Honda is no more an experiment than this....because the answer/results is already known and understood.
 

PidderPeets

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I understand that it's risky and it could end with one eating the other but hey that could happen even when breeding and if it does I'll just purchase another one
I think this is the only thing that people need to read to understand the mindset that's going on here.
 

AphonopelmaTX

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An experiment with an n=1 isn't an experiment but an anecdote and isn't going to prove anything either way.
Out of all the points made in this thread so far, this should be the primary take-away. What worries me about this thread isn't whether these Aphonopelma seemanni will tolerate each others' presence long term. What worries me is that if it is successful, however you want to define "successful" here, the information will propagate throughout the online tarantula community and an anecdote will become an objective truth. From my observations over the years participating in online tarantula communities, people seem to lack fundamental critical thinking skills and fail to question the information they consume. If these A. seemanni live together happily ever after in the same cage, I'm sure we will start seeing posts everywhere saying "A. seemanni is a communal species" which, of course, would be a statement based on one individual keeping just one pair together.
 

Kitara

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the information will propagate throughout the online tarantula community and an anecdote will become an objective truth... people seem to lack fundamental critical thinking skills and fail to question the information they consume.
Agreed! It doesn't even have to be successful because can just post that it was. Change "the online tarantula community" to "the Internet" and you have every meme/ridiculous headline out there and people on FB eat that crap up. I often ask myself, "this is a joke right? These people don't really believe that right?"
 
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