Bumba horrida

[mschemmy]

I picked up this Bumba horrida at an expo last week on a whim so looking for some input. I estimate it to be about 1 inch. As soon as I got it in its amac box with a hide it borrowed and covered the opening with dirt. I thought the Breeder said it recently molted when I bought it. I am guessing it could just be getting settled and trying to feel secure in its new enclosure. Anyone with experience with this species have the same thing happen to them? If so, what should I expect next? I know to never dig up a T and it will come out when it’s ready. Basically looking for any feedback on people’s with similar experiences.

 

[MariaLewisia]

It's really fat so chances are it feels done eating for now and will spend the rest of the time before the next molt underground, where it feels the safest.

Otherwise it's also normal sling behaviour. Tarantulas do what they feel like. Let it do whatever it feels like doing, have a small water bowl ready in case it re-emerges and wants a drink, and all will be well.

 

[Tulip]

I got a Bumba horrida sling the 30th of August 2022. I set it up as I do all of my terrestrial sling, with a lot of substrate to burrow into. It was outside for a couple of months, then it molted, it made a very deep burrow, and after another couple of months it sealed the burrow and hasn’t come out to eat in like four months now. I know that it is alive because its burrow has a little “window” on the side of the enclosure, and it looks like it is in premolt, with a butt as big as your T. I’m not worried about mine because I can see it, but I’m sure yours is in premolt as well, and it’s completely fine.

 

[cold blood]

I would never give it enough room to burrow away and disappear in the first place. This species grows fast and eats really well.....but a lot of people's dont because they tend to burrow away if given the opportunity.

 

[Tulip]

I would never give it enough room to burrow away and disappear in the first place. This species grows fast and eats really well.....but a lot of people's dont because they tend to burrow away if given the opportunity.

If they burrow and disappear it’s because they want to, they are not dumb. We can’t decide what they have to do, we should give them the opportunity to do whatever they want, even if that means that they’ll grow slower. A slower growth doesn’t mean a unhealthy tarantula.

 

[cold blood]

We can’t decide what they have to do,

Sure we can.....and if we do, its for the betterment of the t.

, we should give them the opportunity to do whatever they want, even if that means that they’ll grow slower. A slower growth doesn’t mean a unhealthy

Of course it doesn't mean unhealthy, but there is no argument that the most vulnerable time for a t is the sling stage, and by getting out of the sling stage faster, you will have a more resilient sooner and be less likely to suffer a loss..

Plus, if a t hides all the time, its hard to monitor, and if we can't monitor the sling, how can we help or know to make adjustments should something go wrong.

Look, I get what you are saying, but there is nothing we raise that we just "let do what they want"...cause young everything, like to do all kinds of things that arent beneficial for them....and sure, this is how they grow in the wild, but there is a flipside to that....in the wild there is like a 1% survival rate, in captivity it can be a 99% survival rate....because they don't have to live like in the wild. And in the wild they hide this this all the time due to predators, predators which dont exist in our enclosures, so why encourage a behavior, that in captivity, provides the t with no actual benefit.

JMO

 

[Tulip]

Sure we can.....and if we do, its for the betterment of the t.

Of course it doesn't mean unhealthy, but there is no argument that the most vulnerable time for a t is the sling stage, and by getting out of the sling stage faster, you will have a more resilient sooner and be less likely to suffer a loss..

Plus, if a t hides all the time, its hard to monitor, and if we can't monitor the sling, how can we help or know to make adjustments should something go wrong.

Look, I get what you are saying, but there is nothing we raise that we just "let do what they want"...cause young everything, like to do all kinds of things that arent beneficial for them....and sure, this is how they grow in the wild, but there is a flipside to that....in the wild there is like a 1% survival rate, in captivity it can be a 99% survival rate....because they don't have to live like in the wild. And in the wild they hide this this all the time due to predators, predators which dont exist in our enclosures, so why encourage a behavior, that in captivity, provides the t with no actual benefit.

JMO

Animals do not think this way. Not letting them do what they have evolved to do is not ok. A tarantula sling is not a puppy, they have evolved to manage themselves without or with minimal help from others. We could apply this to anything at this point: why let an adult tarantula burrow, I can’t keep an eye on them that way. But this is my experience, surely limited compared to other people, but still, at this point I think I’ve raised around 20 slings and I have yet to experience a sling dying, and all of my terrestrial slings have around 10cm of dirt to burrow into.

What I’m trying to say is that a tarantula doesn’t know that they have no predator to worry about. They have evolved to be unfortunately at the bottom of the food chain, and they are wired to spend their life hiding and do the best they can at protecting themselves. When we keep a tarantula in an enclosure and we don’t give them the possibility to burrow/web properly, they don’t realise that it’s ok because nothing will eat them, they’ll just be stressed constantly because they try to do what they are meant to do and they can’t. And, keeping other types of animals, I know that high levels of stress for a prolonged period of time bring a decline in health. We don’t have proof of that happening with tarantulas, but I’m not gonna risk it. It’s probably not a big deal for them, but I would feel guilty if I were to not give them a lot of space to do their things. This is just my preference on keeping animals in captivity.

 

[NMTs]

Animals do not think this way. Not letting them do what they have evolved to do is not ok. A tarantula sling is not a puppy, they have evolved to manage themselves without or with minimal help from others. We could apply this to anything at this point: why let an adult tarantula burrow, I can’t keep an eye on them that way. But this is my experience, surely limited compared to other people, but still, at this point I think I’ve raised around 20 slings and I have yet to experience a sling dying, and all of my terrestrial slings have around 10cm of dirt to burrow into.

What I’m trying to say is that a tarantula doesn’t know that they have no predator to worry about. They have evolved to be unfortunately at the bottom of the food chain, and they are wired to spend their life hiding and do the best they can at protecting themselves. When we keep a tarantula in an enclosure and we don’t give them the possibility to burrow/web properly, they don’t realise that it’s ok because nothing will eat them, they’ll just be stressed constantly because they try to do what they are meant to do and they can’t. And, keeping other types of animals, I know that high levels of stress for a prolonged period of time bring a decline in health. We don’t have proof of that happening with tarantulas, but I’m not gonna risk it. It’s probably not a big deal for them, but I would feel guilty if I were to not give them a lot of space to do their things. This is just my preference on keeping animals in captivity.

I've got to agree with @cold blood on this. I've never seen documented cases of slings dying because they didn't have enough substrate to burrow into, but I've seen plenty of documented instances of slings dying because they burrowed and were never seen alive again. It's folly to attempt to recreate wild conditions in a little glass or plastic box in your house - these animals are not living in the wild and there has to be an understanding of that when raising them. If you can minimize or eliminate potential risk factors are you not obligated to do so?

 

[Tulip]

I've got to agree with @cold blood on this. I've never seen documented cases of slings dying because they didn't have enough substrate to burrow into, but I've seen plenty of documented instances of slings dying because they burrowed and were never seen alive again. It's folly to attempt to recreate wild conditions in a little glass or plastic box in your house - these animals are not living in the wild and there has to be an understanding of that when raising them. If you can minimize or eliminate potential risk factors are you not obligated to do so?

Oh come on, burrowing is not a cause of death, improper husbandry is. Let’s be clear, I’m not saying that not having the possibility to burrow kills a tarantula, but we can’t be sure that it doesn’t stress them. Also, this is not about replicating the wild in an enclosure, this is encouraging natural behaviour, which is generally what people that keep animals strive to achieve. And yeah, they are not in the wild but what we really need to understand is that animals will behave like animals, because they don’t know what “being in the wild” means since they’ve spent their entire life in captivity. It’s a very practical, human way of thinking to say that it’s useless to try and replicate their habitat because they live in a plastic box. The problem with this is that every living thing that lives in a specific area has evolved to thrive in its habitat, and biologically speaking that animal has the best chance of survival in an environment that replicates as closely as possible its natural habitat.
And lastly, it’s good to eliminate risks when it’s about optional things, not when it’s about those few essential things that tarantulas do.
This all discussion reminds me of when I got my first snake years ago and people would recommend using aspen instead of soil because soil causes impaction if ingested, and then it turned out that impaction is mostly caused by improper husbandry, that leads to an imbalanced digestion.

 

[NMTs]

Oh come on, burrowing is not a cause of death, improper husbandry is. Let’s be clear, I’m not saying that not having the possibility to burrow kills a tarantula, but we can’t be sure that it doesn’t stress them.

Slings that are kept in small enclosures and not allowed to burrow grow exponentially faster than those which are kept in deep containers that are allowed to burrow away for months on end. This is fact, not opinion. Slings are much more susceptible to husbandry mistakes than juveniles or adults. Additionally, in the wild, a sling that is tucked away in a burrow is not unlikely to come across a worm or a beetle to eat now and then, or for some rain water or dew to trickle down for them to drink. Introducing prey items into a burrow of a captive sling is not generally recommended, and inexperienced keepers have difficulty balancing the right amount of moisture in the substrate that would allow a burrowed sling to drink.

It then stands to reason that one should do the necessary things to accelerate growth out of the sling stage and to simplify sling care. Once that has been accomplished, if you want your T to disappear in the jungle you've created for it in its enclosure, then by all means - it's much less likely to perish when it's grown. I'm not saying a captive animal should always be prevented from behaving naturally - if they were what would be the point of keeping them? I just think it makes sense to get them to a point where that natural behavior doesn't make keeping them unnecessarily difficult for the keeper or unnecessarily dangerous for the animal.

 

[cold blood]

Animals do not think this way

Tarantulas lack a brain...they literally, don't think, at least not anything like a mammal does, for example.

. Not letting them do what they have evolved to do is not ok. A tarantula sling is not a puppy,

A sling is not a puppy, not letting them burrow away and disappear is a far cry from not letting them do what they have evolved to. Its literally one small aspect.

Here is the thing I don't think you are considering, when you house a sling in a small enclosure, they literally adopt the entire thing as their burrow, they have less propensity to want to hide, and instead, sit out waiting for food all the time.

Its also important to note, I didn't say not to not give then enough to burrow, I always give enough room for the option...just not so deep that they burrow away and disappear.... allowing for a shallow burrow, keeps them up near the top...and frankly, because they adopt the entire enclosure as a burrow, actually having one burrow is an uncommon occurrence.

, they have evolved to manage themselves without or with minimal help from others.

Not really, recruitment, or survival to adulthood, is a rare occurrence for many animals, ts included....in the wild, huge numbers of babies never see adulthood.....how they manage to survive has less to do with special skills than it does with large sac sizes (or large clutches or repetitive breeding in the cases of other small animals).

: why let an adult tarantula burrow,

Because they are much hardier, and also, far far less likely to burrow away and disappear.....most adult terrestrials though, just don't burrow nearly as much, if at all.

. But this is my experience, surely limited compared to other people, but still, at this point I think I’ve raised around 20 slings and I have yet to experience a sling dying.

There you go, this actually explains things.

I currently have 10 times that many on one shelf alone and have raised tens of thousands of slings, and actually did a long term experiment with NW terrestrials, where I put half in oversize enclosures that encouraged burrowing, and half that didn't.

Throughout the experiment, those in the small cups, almost never missed a meal, while those burrowed away, rarely ate, and in some cases never ate more than a single meal despite being fed on the exact same schedule. The consistency was incredible. At the end of a year and a half the experiment ended when all the ones in small cups had outgrown the enclosures and needed to be housed. I then removed all the ones burrowed away and to my surprise, found that none of them looked like they had grown at all, or very little....the size differences between them and the others was staggerring, and there was not a single exception on either side. The ones housed in cups were all now juvies sporting adult colors, the ones burrowed away were considerably smaller then the prey I was now feeding the others.

i then moved those still tiny slings into small cups, and literally every single one began to eat ferociously and began to molt and grow at a much faster rate. By my estimations, the ones in the cups grew 5 times faster.

So clearly the ones that burrowed away WANTED to eat and gro, they were just too scared to come to the surface...that to me is a bigger indicator of stress than anything i witnessed.

What I’m trying to say is that a tarantula doesn’t know that they have no predator to worry about

Nope, but we do, and we can adjust accordingly.

They have evolved to be unfortunately at the bottom of the food chain

Actually, they're not at the bottom, ts are top level invert predators, many even capable and willing to kill and eat significantly larger prey like snakes, frogs, mice, bats and even birds.

When we keep a tarantula in an enclosure and we don’t give them the possibility to burrow/web properly, they don’t realise that it’s ok because nothing will eat them

They adopt the cup as a burrow and literally sit out confidently all the time.

they’ll just be stressed constantly because they try to do what they are meant to do and they can’t.

I can guarantee you this is not true.

. And, keeping other types of animals, I know that high levels of stress for a prolonged period of time bring a decline in health.

You are assuming there is stress without there even being evidence of it.

We don’t have proof of that happening with tarantulas, but I’m not gonna risk it.

Its not a risky thing to do, not remotely, its just a different method than you use.

but I would feel guilty if I were to not give them a lot of space to do their things

you are anthropomorphizing.

This is just my preference on keeping animals in captivity.

And that is just fine, you can do whatever you like, I am just offering an alternative that in my 25 years' experience has proven to work better. But I am not demanding you change your ways, its your t room.

Oh come on, burrowing is not a cause of death, improper husbandry is

Improper husbandry isnt always the cause...and no one here is saying burrowing causes death, that's absurd. We are saying there are downsides to it, that's all.

Slow growth, hard to monitor, , hard to see small issues that arise, and lets face it, most people would like to see their slings...especially newer keepers...it makes for a much more confident slling owner.

, but we can’t be sure that it doesn’t stress them

you can't be worried about stress like that....but i will say, never once have I had a sling in a small enclosure and seen ANY stressful behavior...I would argue that burrowing away is a bigger sign of stress from an oversize enclosure, as when they burrow away, they aren't doing themselves any favors.....slings like to eat and grow, and if they are scared to come to the surface to eat, they don't eat as often or grow as fast.

Also, this is not about replicating the wild in an enclosure, this is encouraging natural behavior,

Limiting one single aspect doesn't mean your t will be not exhibiting natural behavior.

And yeah, they are not in the wild but what we really need to understand is that animals will behave like animals, because they don’t know what “being in the wild” means since they’ve spent their entire life in captivity.

Yep, that's basically my point....they don't know its safe not to burrow, but we do, so we have a choice to set them up for success, or we can make them think they need to burrow away...when they're already safe and have no need to burrow away and hide....in captivity when a sling burrows away, its doing so because it thinks it needs to, to be safe.....it doesn't though, does it?

It’s a very practical, human way of thinking to say that it’s useless to try and replicate their habitat because they live in a plastic box.

A plastic box cannot EVER replicate natural habitat.....we should shoot to give them ideal conditions, because we can, not the difficult natural conditions they live in out in the wild. All I am suggesting is offering those more ideal conditions than the wild could ever offer.

. The problem with this is that every living thing that lives in a specific area has evolved to thrive in its habitat, and biologically speaking that animal has the best chance of survival in an environment that replicates as closely as possible its natural habitat

Not true, invasives illustrate this perfectly. I will use one example out of probably thousands I could use. A rock or reticulated python evolved to live in Africa...but when they found their way to Florida, they found life much better suited to them, and they thrive there now, despite massive efforts to exterminate them...why? Because Florida is even better for them than the place they evolved to live.

Many animals that live in harsh conditions, have significantly easier times when removed from those situations and placed into less harsh conditions.

This all discussion reminds me of when I got my first snake years ago and people would recommend using aspen instead of soil because soil causes impaction if ingested, and then it turned out that impaction is mostly caused by improper husbandry, that leads to an imbalanced digestion.

apples to oranges....there are ZERO health problems that come from not letting a sling to burrow itself away.

 

[Tulip]

Tarantulas lack a brain...they literally, don't think, at least not anything like a mammal does, for example.


A sling is not a puppy, not letting them burrow away and disappear is a far cry from not letting them do what they have evolved to. Its literally one small aspect.

Here is the thing I don't think you are considering, when you house a sling in a small enclosure, they literally adopt the entire thing as their burrow, they have less propensity to want to hide, and instead, sit out waiting for food all the time.

Its also important to note, I didn't say not to not give then enough to burrow, I always give enough room for the option...just not so deep that they burrow away and disappear.... allowing for a shallow burrow, keeps them up near the top...and frankly, because they adopt the entire enclosure as a burrow, actually having one burrow is an uncommon occurrence.

Not really, recruitment, or survival to adulthood, is a rare occurrence for many animals, ts included....in the wild, huge numbers of babies never see adulthood.....how they manage to survive has less to do with special skills than it does with large sac sizes (or large clutches or repetitive breeding in the cases of other small animals).

Because they are much hardier, and also, far far less likely to burrow away and disappear.....most adult terrestrials though, just don't burrow nearly as much, if at all.


There you go, this actually explains things.

I currently have 10 times that many on one shelf alone and have raised tens of thousands of slings, and actually did a long term experiment with NW terrestrials, where I put half in oversize enclosures that encouraged burrowing, and half that didn't.

Throughout the experiment, those in the small cups, almost never missed a meal, while those burrowed away, rarely ate, and in some cases never ate more than a single meal despite being fed on the exact same schedule. The consistency was incredible. At the end of a year and a half the experiment ended when all the ones in small cups had outgrown the enclosures and needed to be housed. I then removed all the ones burrowed away and to my surprise, found that none of them looked like they had grown at all, or very little....the size differences between them and the others was staggerring, and there was not a single exception on either side. The ones housed in cups were all now juvies sporting adult colors, the ones burrowed away were considerably smaller then the prey I was now feeding the others.

i then moved those still tiny slings into small cups, and literally every single one began to eat ferociously and began to molt and grow at a much faster rate. By my estimations, the ones in the cups grew 5 times faster.

So clearly the ones that burrowed away WANTED to eat and gro, they were just too scared to come to the surface...that to me is a bigger indicator of stress than anything i witnessed.

Nope, but we do, and we can adjust accordingly.

Actually, they're not at the bottom, ts are top level invert predators, many even capable and willing to kill and eat significantly larger prey like snakes, frogs, mice, bats and even birds.
They adopt the cup as a burrow and literally sit out confidently all the time.

I can guarantee you this is not true.


You are assuming there is stress without there even being evidence of it.

Its not a risky thing to do, not remotely, its just a different method than you use.



you are anthropomorphizing.

And that is just fine, you can do whatever you like, I am just offering an alternative that in my 25 years' experience has proven to work better. But I am not demanding you change your ways, its your t room.

Improper husbandry isnt always the cause...and no one here is saying burrowing causes death, that's absurd. We are saying there are downsides to it, that's all.

Slow growth, hard to monitor, , hard to see small issues that arise, and lets face it, most people would like to see their slings...especially newer keepers...it makes for a much more confident slling owner.

you can't be worried about stress like that....but i will say, never once have I had a sling in a small enclosure and seen ANY stressful behavior...I would argue that burrowing away is a bigger sign of stress from an oversize enclosure, as when they burrow away, they aren't doing themselves any favors.....slings like to eat and grow, and if they are scared to come to the surface to eat, they don't eat as often or grow as fast.

Limiting one single aspect doesn't mean your t will be not exhibiting natural behavior.
Yep, that's basically my point....they don't know its safe not to burrow, but we do, so we have a choice to set them up for success, or we can make them think they need to burrow away...when they're already safe and have no need to burrow away and hide....in captivity when a sling burrows away, its doing so because it thinks it needs to, to be safe.....it doesn't though, does it?


A plastic box cannot EVER replicate natural habitat.....we should shoot to give them ideal conditions, because we can, not the difficult natural conditions they live in out in the wild. All I am suggesting is offering those more ideal conditions than the wild could ever offer.
Not true, invasives illustrate this perfectly. I will use one example out of probably thousands I could use. A rock or reticulated python evolved to live in Africa...but when they found their way to Florida, they found life much better suited to them, and they thrive there now, despite massive efforts to exterminate them...why? Because Florida is even better for them than the place they evolved to live.

Many animals that live in harsh conditions, have significantly easier times when removed from those situations and placed into less harsh conditions.


apples to oranges....there are ZERO health problems that come from not letting a sling to burrow itself away.

Ok, we have different ways of keeping tarantulas, but I have to correct some things.
-Tarantulas do have brains, not like ours of course, but their central nervous system is located at the bottom of the inner prosoma. When referring to animals, thinking means responding to stimuli and exhibiting instinctual behaviour, which every animal does, even the most simple organism.
-The amount of eggs in a clutch doesn’t serve the purpose of contrasting slings that are incapable of managing for themselves, but for contrasting all of the babies that will be eaten by other animals and the ones that get sick, which brings me to my next point:
-No, tarantulas are not at the top of the food chain. When talking about food chains we take into consideration first how much competition an animal faces in their natural habitat (how many predators it has), then its ability to hunt. Tarantulas may be amazing hunters, but it’s a fact that they are hunted by a massive amount of other animals. When talking about the terrestrial invertebrates food chain, ants (especially fire ants) are at the top of the food chain.
-You can say that a sling that has to use their whole enclosure as a burrow is “sitting out comfortably”, I can say that they simply don’t have anything else to do rather then eat when being offered food, and there is no way to prove any of us wrong yet.
-Saying that I’m over-rating stress makes me understand that you don’t have a lot of experience with other types of animals. It’s a proven fact that stress in mammals, reptiles, birds and fish with time inhibits the immune system, drastically shortening the life span. Again, there is not enough research on tarantulas to say that this doesn’t apply to them.
-Feeling guilty about not providing among standard care and enclosures is not anthropomorphising, is simply caring about that animal. I would be anthropomorphising if I said that tarantulas are sad when they have nothing to do, but I’m simply talking about base instinctual behaviour based on science.
-In any species, babies will be constantly on the look out for predators, hence why they get scared easily. Burrowing does show stress, but because it’s a way of reducing stress. Again, since we can’t prove that it is sufficient for a sling to just be in a small enclosure to not be stressed, we can’t prove that those slings are less stressed then the ones that can burrow.
-Last thing, invasive species have no place in what I was saying, that’s why I specified “species that are found only in a specific area”. Invasive species are simply species that are more resilient and were introduced in similar conditions to their natural habitat. If it wasn’t for us, there would be no invasive species.

 

[cold blood]

Tarantulas do have brains, not like ours of course, but their central nervous system is located at the bottom of the inner prosoma. When referring to animals, thinking means responding to stimuli and exhibiting instinctual behaviour, which every animal does, even the most simple organism.

If they had brains, science would call them brains, and not ganglion. There is a scientific difference between the two terms.

he amount of eggs in a clutch doesn’t serve the purpose of contrasting slings that are incapable of managing for themselves, but for contrasting all of the babies that will be eaten by other animals and the ones that get sick, which brings me to my next point:

Large clutches are an example of low survival rates.

-No, tarantulas are not at the top of the food chain

I did not say that, not remotely. I said they are not at the bottom...and I called them top level invert predators that could even hunt above their grade.....monumental difference from me calling them top of the food chain.

You can say that a sling that has to use their whole enclosure as a burrow is “sitting out comfortably”, I can say that they simply don’t have anything else to do rather then eat when being offered food, and there is no way to prove any of us wrong yet.

yet they eat better and grow faster....stress must be like fertilizer...lol. Look, if they were stressed or cramped, they would pace, they would be all over, they would dig, they wouldn't just sit in hunting position all day.

And "they dont have anything else to do"? You're kidding, right? Like should I set them up with a twitter account? Sitting out hunting is precisely "what slings do"...its like their nintendo for goodness sake. Do you think slings burrow to relieve their boredom?

Saying that I’m over-rating stress makes me understand that you don’t have a lot of experience with other types of animals. It’s a proven fact that stress in mammals, reptiles, birds and fish with time inhibits the immune system, drastically shortening the life span. Again, there is not enough research on tarantulas to say that this doesn’t apply to them.

ALL animals go through stress, period, its an unavoidable part of life. If the slings in smaller enclosures were stressed, and it was affecting their health, please explain to me why those were the ones that ate better and grew faster? And why the burrowers were the polar opposite? Its because the burrowed slings are voluntarily restricting their food intake in lieu of staying safe.

Its a known fact that slings fed less at a younger age tend to have smaller adult size. In any other animal you would call this stunting due to malnutrition... This is an excerpt by Sam Marshall from "tarantulas and other arachnids" explaining this:

"If you restrict their food when young, they will also not grow as large when they mature".

What the spiderling wants and needs is lots of food and growth, its literally putting everything toward it, and when I see retarded growth rates with excessively burrowed slings, this is a direct indicator that its not what is best for them or their health.

Feeling guilty about not providing among standard care and enclosures is not anthropomorphising,

Because you are feeling guilty, only from a human standpoint, it is indeed anthropomorphism...by definition. Its like me feeling bad cause my fish can't see the tv. As my fish doesnt need to watch tv any more than your sling needs more room to roam around in.

-In any species, babies will be constantly on the look out for predators, hence why they get scared easily. Burrowing does show stress, but because it’s a way of reducing stress

see what you did right there, you proved my point, and you probably didn't even realize it.

If they burrow to relive stress....why are yours burrowed? And why are mine not burrowed? The former is stressed and looking to ease that, the latter are suffering no stress, and therefore have significantly less to no urge to burrow....meaning burrowed slings suffered stress that unborrowed ones haven't experienced.

Last thing, invasive species have no place in what I was saying,

It was a perfect response...I showed you a species that when placed on another Continent from where it evolved, actually did even better than it did in its original place of origin.

 

[Tulip]

If they had brains, science would call them brains, and not ganglion. There is a scientific difference between the two terms.

Large clutches are an example of low survival rates.

I did not say that, not remotely. I said they are not at the bottom...and I called them top level invert predators that could even hunt above their grade.....monumental difference from me calling them top of the food chain.

yet they eat better and grow faster....stress must be like fertilizer...lol. Look, if they were stressed or cramped, they would pace, they would be all over, they would dig, they wouldn't just sit in hunting position all day.

And "they dont have anything else to do"? You're kidding, right? Like should I set them up with a twitter account? Sitting out hunting is precisely "what slings do"...its like their nintendo for goodness sake. Do you think slings burrow to relieve their boredom?

ALL animals go through stress, period, its an unavoidable part of life. If the slings in smaller enclosures were stressed, and it was affecting their health, please explain to me why those were the ones that ate better and grew faster? And why the burrowers were the polar opposite? Its because the burrowed slings are voluntarily restricting their food intake in lieu of staying safe.

Its a known fact that slings fed less at a younger age tend to have smaller adult size. In any other animal you would call this stunting due to malnutrition... This is an excerpt by Sam Marshall from "tarantulas and other arachnids" explaining this:

"If you restrict their food when young, they will also not grow as large when they mature".

What the spiderling wants and needs is lots of food and growth, its literally putting everything toward it, and when I see retarded growth rates with excessively burrowed slings, this is a direct indicator that its not what is best for them or their health.


Because you are feeling guilty, only from a human standpoint, it is indeed anthropomorphism...by definition. Its like me feeling bad cause my fish can't see the tv. As my fish doesnt need to watch tv any more than your sling needs more room to roam around in.

see what you did right there, you proved my point, and you probably didn't even realize it.

If they burrow to relive stress....why are yours burrowed? And why are mine not burrowed? The former is stressed and looking to ease that, the latter are suffering no stress, and therefore have significantly less to no urge to burrow....meaning burrowed slings suffered stress that unborrowed ones haven't experienced.

It was a perfect response...I showed you a species that when placed on another Continent from where it evolved, actually did even better than it did in its original place of origin.

Ok keep your thoughts, but just one thing: your slings don’t burrow, and you said clearly that you don’t give your small slings the ability to do that. My slings burrow and live in intricate web nests, and yet they eat a lot, grow a lot, and they come out when nobody is watching them. I just have to approach feeding them differently. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you’re wrong, maybe nobody is wrong. For the invasive species, I explained that I’m not talking about them, I don’t know what else to say. I have always been told that I’m exaggerating when it comes to caring for animals, and yet my animals have never had any health issues that depend on husbandry and care, I’m used to that.
Also your experience with growth rate in tarantulas is not the absolute truth: the person that introduced to me a lot of different ways to approach invertebrate keeping has kept tarantulas for more than 30 years, and has always had opposite results to the ones you’ve had.
Oh and also, brain is not a scientific term, cerebrum is. With “brain” we define a physical nervous system, cerebrum is that type of brain that is diveded in two hemispheres. There is not just one type of brain in the world.
This is one of the numerous documents that proves brain functions in tarantulas:https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0300962988910584

 

[cold blood]

your slings don’t burrow, and you said clearly that you don’t give your small slings the ability to do that.

Clearly? Cause i didnt say that, in fact, I explained it clearly, I do give room to burrow, just not the room to do so excessively.

I just have to approach feeding them differently. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe you’re wrong, maybe nobody is wrong.

Yep, its just a different approach.

For the invasive species, I explained that I’m not talking about them,

I know you arent talking about invasives, but you CLEARLY missed my point. You DID say that they are evolved to live in certain environments, and this is why I brought it up. It was an example of an animal that evolved to live in one place, but when moved to another, it actually did better, showing that the place an animal evolved, isnt always necessarily the best place for them as they can be more prolific outside this range they evolved in.

Also your experience with growth rate in tarantulas is not the absolute truth:

It is not just my experience...far from it.

the person that introduced to me a lot of different ways to approach invertebrate keeping has kept tarantulas for more than 30 years, and has always had opposite results to the ones you’ve had

As I said earlier, there is more than one way to do things.

This is one of the numerous documents that proves brain functions in tarantulas

Cal it what you want, show that a ganglion acts as a brain, its still different than a brain by definition, which is why its NOT called a brain, and instead, its called a ganglion....brains function at a higher level and have hemispheres.

 

[Tulip]

Clearly? Cause zi didnt say that, in fact, I explained it clearly, I do give room to burrow, just not the room to do so excessively.
Yep, its just a different approach.
I know you arent talking about invasives, but you CLEARLY missed my point. You DID say that they are evolved to live in certain environments, and this is why I brought it up. It was an example of an animal that evolved to live in one place, but when moved to another, it actually did better, showing that the place an animal evolved, isnt always necessarily the best place for them as they can be more prolific outside this range they evolved in.
It is not just my experience...far from it.
As I said earlier, there is more than one way to do things.


Cal it what you want, show that a ganglion acts as a brain, its still different than a brain by definition, which is why its NOT called a brain, and instead, its called a ganglion....brains function at a higher level and have hemispheres.

Geez ok, clearly you don’t understand how invasive species work, this is beyond the discussion here but I wouldn’t be a biology student if I didn’t explain to you. An invasive species thrives in a “different environment” (which actually is not different, because the atmospheric conditions are always very similar to their starter habitat) for one simple reason: since they don’t belong where we bring them, they have no natural predators, or the predators are not enough to contrast how fast they reproduce. The environment conditions have to be the same. The survival of an invasive species has nothing to do with a different environment being better then their habitat, it’s just an ecological imbalance brought by the absence of enough predators. But the climate conditions have to be at least similar to the ones of their original habitat. If I bring a Burmese python here in Italy, it will die, because it’s too cold in winter and too dry in summer.
Another example of invasive species is the lion fish in the Mediterranean Sea. Why is it becoming invasive now? Because the water is progressively getting warmer, and it’s now warm enough for them to thrive (because it has the same temperature of their natural habitat). Being that there is no predator here that has evolved to hunt them, they are reproducing non stop.
When i say that they have evolved to live in a place, I don’t mean a geographical place, that has no importance. By place, I mean a particular environment with particular conditions.
And about the brain, again, a brain is just a nervous system, the brain with the two distinguished hemispheres is a cerebrum. Brain is an umbrella term, which also includes ganglions. Saying that a tarantula doesn’t have a brain is simply incorrect. You should say that a tarantula doesn’t have a cerebrum, but it does have a brain. I’m not “calling it what I want”, I’m using correct scientific terminology, since you brought science up. Now, I think that we can end it here.

 

[Ultum4Spiderz]

Tarantulas lack a brain...they literally, don't think, at least not anything like a mammal does, for example.


A sling is not a puppy, not letting them burrow away and disappear is a far cry from not letting them do what they have evolved to. Its literally one small aspect.

Here is the thing I don't think you are considering, when you house a sling in a small enclosure, they literally adopt the entire thing as their burrow, they have less propensity to want to hide, and instead, sit out waiting for food all the time.

Its also important to note, I didn't say not to not give then enough to burrow, I always give enough room for the option...just not so deep that they burrow away and disappear.... allowing for a shallow burrow, keeps them up near the top...and frankly, because they adopt the entire enclosure as a burrow, actually having one burrow is an uncommon occurrence.

Not really, recruitment, or survival to adulthood, is a rare occurrence for many animals, ts included....in the wild, huge numbers of babies never see adulthood.....how they manage to survive has less to do with special skills than it does with large sac sizes (or large clutches or repetitive breeding in the cases of other small animals).

Because they are much hardier, and also, far far less likely to burrow away and disappear.....most adult terrestrials though, just don't burrow nearly as much, if at all.


There you go, this actually explains things.

I currently have 10 times that many on one shelf alone and have raised tens of thousands of slings, and actually did a long term experiment with NW terrestrials, where I put half in oversize enclosures that encouraged burrowing, and half that didn't.

Throughout the experiment, those in the small cups, almost never missed a meal, while those burrowed away, rarely ate, and in some cases never ate more than a single meal despite being fed on the exact same schedule. The consistency was incredible. At the end of a year and a half the experiment ended when all the ones in small cups had outgrown the enclosures and needed to be housed. I then removed all the ones burrowed away and to my surprise, found that none of them looked like they had grown at all, or very little....the size differences between them and the others was staggerring, and there was not a single exception on either side. The ones housed in cups were all now juvies sporting adult colors, the ones burrowed away were considerably smaller then the prey I was now feeding the others.

i then moved those still tiny slings into small cups, and literally every single one began to eat ferociously and began to molt and grow at a much faster rate. By my estimations, the ones in the cups grew 5 times faster.

So clearly the ones that burrowed away WANTED to eat and gro, they were just too scared to come to the surface...that to me is a bigger indicator of stress than anything i witnessed.

Nope, but we do, and we can adjust accordingly.

Actually, they're not at the bottom, ts are top level invert predators, many even capable and willing to kill and eat significantly larger prey like snakes, frogs, mice, bats and even birds.
They adopt the cup as a burrow and literally sit out confidently all the time.

I can guarantee you this is not true.


You are assuming there is stress without there even being evidence of it.

Its not a risky thing to do, not remotely, its just a different method than you use.



you are anthropomorphizing.

And that is just fine, you can do whatever you like, I am just offering an alternative that in my 25 years' experience has proven to work better. But I am not demanding you change your ways, its your t room.

Improper husbandry isnt always the cause...and no one here is saying burrowing causes death, that's absurd. We are saying there are downsides to it, that's all.

Slow growth, hard to monitor, , hard to see small issues that arise, and lets face it, most people would like to see their slings...especially newer keepers...it makes for a much more confident slling owner.

you can't be worried about stress like that....but i will say, never once have I had a sling in a small enclosure and seen ANY stressful behavior...I would argue that burrowing away is a bigger sign of stress from an oversize enclosure, as when they burrow away, they aren't doing themselves any favors.....slings like to eat and grow, and if they are scared to come to the surface to eat, they don't eat as often or grow as fast.

Limiting one single aspect doesn't mean your t will be not exhibiting natural behavior.
Yep, that's basically my point....they don't know its safe not to burrow, but we do, so we have a choice to set them up for success, or we can make them think they need to burrow away...when they're already safe and have no need to burrow away and hide....in captivity when a sling burrows away, its doing so because it thinks it needs to, to be safe.....it doesn't though, does it?


A plastic box cannot EVER replicate natural habitat.....we should shoot to give them ideal conditions, because we can, not the difficult natural conditions they live in out in the wild. All I am suggesting is offering those more ideal conditions than the wild could ever offer.
Not true, invasives illustrate this perfectly. I will use one example out of probably thousands I could use. A rock or reticulated python evolved to live in Africa...but when they found their way to Florida, they found life much better suited to them, and they thrive there now, despite massive efforts to exterminate them...why? Because Florida is even better for them than the place they evolved to live.

Many animals that live in harsh conditions, have significantly easier times when removed from those situations and placed into less harsh conditions.


apples to oranges....there are ZERO health problems that come from not letting a sling to burrow itself away.

Your correct and letting them burrow and hide away can be dangerous, that was the downfall to me keeping obt and a few taps .. now all I have are new worlds which are more of a hassel because the hairs which I’m allergic too.

 

[mschemmy]

Soooo . . . just joking. It seems like there are a lot of thoughts on this subject and all good ones. Obviously this is how keepers learn and grow from people sharing their knowledge and experiences. I appreciate all the feedback. If it was an adult T I would have been more comfortable letting it do its thing. Since I had little knowledge about this sling since I got it and burrowed immediately I decided to dig it up and get a better feel for what was going on. The picture is not great but it definitely looks like it’s in premolt from what I can tell. I thought the Breeder at the expo told me it just molted but I may have just misheard what she said. I moved it to a new deli cup with a much better hide than the first one. I feel better knowing it’s okay and hopefully it will molt soon.

 

[Tulip]

Soooo . . . just joking. It seems like there are a lot of thoughts on this subject and all good ones. Obviously this is how keepers learn and grow from people sharing their knowledge and experiences. I appreciate all the feedback. If it was an adult T I would have been more comfortable letting it do its thing. Since I had little knowledge about this sling since I got it and burrowed immediately I decided to dig it up and get a better feel for what was going on. The picture is not great but it definitely looks like it’s in premolt from what I can tell. I thought the Breeder at the expo told me it just molted but I may have just misheard what she said. I moved it to a new deli cup with a much better hide than the first one. I feel better knowing it’s okay and hopefully it will molt soon.

Omg look at that cute big butt