are tarantulas a sustainable food source?

[knifeguy]

If you really do some work on the subject you will find that most of the eaten Ts are actually eaten by tourists that simply want to try the local cuisine. The place Thomas was talking about, the one where he could not find 1 haplopelma was not really T empty because the local population decided to fill their bellies with them but more because they used those poor things as a money source. Selling them to ppl who either needed bulk quantities to use in the trade or to people who found out that dumb tourists pay good money to eat hairy legs or by selling them directly to visitig fools.
Sure, they probably said that they used them as a food source, what better way to soften a heart(with the intent of sucking money from pockets) than to tell a story about how ppl were starving so they had to rape mother earth and eat all the Ts they could find. If a tribe is some area is actually starving, trust me, they will not be able to keep themselfs alive by eating Ts. They would have the same chances to survive on Ts as they would have by eating... dirt.
It's the same story as it is with the viper wine or scorpion drinks found in parts of Asia. You drink, good for heart! Makes your .... strong for lady back home! We use for many things this! You buy!
And some poor sucker is convinced to buy some bad tasting wine with some poor cobra/viper/scorpion inside of it and the sucker does buy because he want to be strong for lady back home and hey... it's 5 times cheaper than viagra... why not?
I'd encourage everyone to stop believing all those hunger strikes stories because even IF some poor "tribe" is starving and they managed to turn the T population to 0 they did it not by eating them but by selling them.
And even if i do feel sorry for them i really can not be on their side considering they are a part of this world's destruction.
I do realise that in some countries ppl have it bad but that is not a reason to destroy what does not belong to them.
Have a similar story about a village in my country(there are probably more) but the story is about frogs. Ppl go out in the night in swampy areas, find the frogs, cut the legs of while the frog is still alive then they simply leave the frog there to die with no back legs and then they sell those legs to some french guys who make a fortune out of them by reselling them to french restaurants in ... yes France(don't get me wrong, i'm not blaming France for it... If they want to eat toad legs there is little i can do about it anyway). The ppl in this village have the same story, poor us, we are starving, we make food from the legs, we have nothing else to eat. Sure, till you got busted along with the mofos that were buying them from you...
And to get back to Ts let's not forget the g. rosea that is known to be WC in most cases... The hobby takes a toll to, let's put the blame on all the perps if we are at it.
Sorry for the messy setup, i am dead tired.

 

[Pociemon]

If you really do some work on the subject you will find that most of the eaten Ts are actually eaten by tourists that simply want to try the local cuisine. The place Thomas was talking about, the one where he could not find 1 haplopelma was not really T empty because the local population decided to fill their bellies with them but more because they used those poor things as a money source. Selling them to ppl who either needed bulk quantities to use in the trade or to people who found out that dumb tourists pay good money to eat hairy legs or by selling them directly to visitig fools.
Sure, they probably said that they used them as a food source, what better way to soften a heart(with the intent of sucking money from pockets) than to tell a story about how ppl were starving so they had to rape mother earth and eat all the Ts they could find. If a tribe is some area is actually starving, trust me, they will not be able to keep themselfs alive by eating Ts. They would have the same chances to survive on Ts as they would have by eating... dirt.
It's the same story as it is with the viper wine or scorpion drinks found in parts of Asia. You drink, good for heart! Makes your .... strong for lady back home! We use for many things this! You buy!
And some poor sucker is convinced to buy some bad tasting wine with some poor cobra/viper/scorpion inside of it and the sucker does buy because he want to be strong for lady back home and hey... it's 5 times cheaper than viagra... why not?
I'd encourage everyone to stop believing all those hunger strikes stories because even IF some poor "tribe" is starving and they managed to turn the T population to 0 they did it not by eating them but by selling them.
And even if i do feel sorry for them i really can not be on their side considering they are a part of this world's destruction.
I do realise that in some countries ppl have it bad but that is not a reason to destroy what does not belong to them.
Have a similar story about a village in my country(there are probably more) but the story is about frogs. Ppl go out in the night in swampy areas, find the frogs, cut the legs of while the frog is still alive then they simply leave the frog there to die with no back legs and then they sell those legs to some french guys who make a fortune out of them by reselling them to french restaurants in ... yes France(don't get me wrong, i'm not blaming France for it... If they want to eat toad legs there is little i can do about it anyway). The ppl in this village have the same story, poor us, we are starving, we make food from the legs, we have nothing else to eat. Sure, till you got busted along with the mofos that were buying them from you...
And to get back to Ts let's not forget the g. rosea that is known to be WC in most cases... The hobby takes a toll to, let's put the blame on all the perps if we are at it.
Sorry for the messy setup, i am dead tired.

Good post.

In that area i was there were no tourist, it was near Laos. I was only there because of my wifes family lives there. They told me they themselves eat them. But of course they could have shipped some to places with tourist. But i did catch many scorpions(H. spinifer) and centipedes.

 

[knifeguy]

Unfortunately ppl tend to ignore the consequences of their actions to the point where it is useless to stop and think about what they did.
Killing animals for fur, bringing hundreds of species to extinction, ravaging forests and rivers, seas and oceans for pure profit, basically taking a huge dump on the planet that keeps us all alive and well.
And soon this planet will show her dark side and perhaps then we will understand what we have done. To bad it will be way to late to even be sorry.
Until that happens people will still annihilate the T populations in various corners of the earth, kill snakes and inverts to put in wine jars and so on.
Pity that the greatest species of this planet is also the dumbest and the most ignorant one of all.
I bow my head in sorrow and in silence.

 

[Arachnos482]

I have to concur with knifeguy, we are like a virus on this planet, we ravage the natural resources, and then move on, leaving the area barren, I think that's why the diseases are getting worst, it's the earths way of keeping the populous in check, but do to modern medicine, that control mechanism is failing, and we are growing exponentially as a species, soon we'll have super viruses ravaging us, earths dark side as knifeguy put it... Can't wait, about time we remembered our place on this planet, not as rulers of it, but as co- inhabitants.