beef as food

Lycanthrope

Arachnolord
Old Timer
Joined
Oct 10, 2002
Messages
622
I have been awaiting my cricket order to arrive, and ran out of crix yesterday. i had read about feeding ts small bits of meat in such an emergency, so i rolled up a little ball of ground beef and tossed it in my T.blondi's enclosure. she responded by grabbing the meat as it hit the ground(shes a speedy lil beast). anyway i got to thinking, beef is a fatty meat. you think that the fat could be stored in the t, acting as a lubricant later to ease the escape from the old exoskeleton during a molt? im sure im just taking a shot in the dark here, and it would probably take a significant amount of beef to make a difference, but maybe it would help with t's who are prone to molt problems, such as the T.blondi?:rolleyes: maybe a dumb idea but thought id ask some of you more technically minded folks (looking in code monkeys direction and guarding testicles)
 

Code Monkey

Arachnoemperor
Old Timer
Joined
Jul 22, 2002
Messages
3,783
I'm going to go with 'no'. The lubricant, whatever it is exactly (I believe I saw something from Dr. Breene one time which described it as similar to their digestive spit - breaks down the connective tissues between the old and new skin but not the skin itself), is not going to take on characters of whatever you're feeding the T.
 

conipto

ArachnoPrincess
Old Timer
Joined
Sep 27, 2002
Messages
1,256
Hey CM -

Is it not entirely impossible that whatever chemicals that are lacking (that make up said molt-assisting substance) in say, a blondi having molt problems, might be moreso supplemented with other foods? Maybe not beef per se, but assuming there is more to it than just humidty/temperature issues, why rule this out, without further study?

Bill

P.S. - Go ahead, I was married, I don't have any nads left ;)
 

Code Monkey

Arachnoemperor
Old Timer
Joined
Jul 22, 2002
Messages
3,783
Oh, I'm not ruling out that if beef or anoles or fileted platypus had something in it that a T needs that crickets don't provide that might not have an effect. I will rule out that feeding greasy food equals greasy lubricant, though, which is what was initially suggested.
 

chaset

Arachnosquire
Old Timer
Joined
Sep 9, 2002
Messages
120
Experimenting

Actually it would not be a difficult experiment to do,

First step would be to find out what T Blondi's commonly eat in the wild vs. what they eat in captivity, then you could build a hypothesis then a few test groups could be set up with food they would normally find in the wild vs. store bought fauna that might not live in there local.

The difficult but nessacary part would be to extract some of the fluid around molt time, and run a chemical analysis, and compare the different make up in the test groups. Keeping track of which group moults better.

I have another theory, maybe T. Blondis are more active in the wild.
Its been proven that inactivity causes health problems in mamals.
What if T. Blondis are over eating and being to lazy? It might not be a problem in other T's but since blondi's are a lot different.
Which leads me to the Question, Do other memebers of thereposa have molting problems?

It is entirely possible, nature her self is phasing T. Blondi's out the trend seems to be towards smaller spiders, and smaller everything. extreme size spiders might be an evolutionary grandfather in the grand scheme of nature.
 

Lycanthrope

Arachnolord
Old Timer
Joined
Oct 10, 2002
Messages
622
maybe the molting problem is just another block placed strategically to ensure south america doesnt have an over abundance of 10+ inch tarantulas running about. like predation, just another occurence to keep the populace in check.
 
Top