burrows...optional?

kellygirl

Arachnoprince
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ok, i understand that it would be optimal to simulate the natural habitat of an obligate burrower, as much as possible. but i was talking to one of my friends about the cobalt blue and how it is beautiful but most people dont see theirs much. he asked me what happens if you dont provide material to burrow with... any answers?

kellygirl
 

Code Monkey

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With obligates, anything from nothing to a stressed out T that refuses to eat and dies an early death. You can't know before hand so if you don't want a burrowing T, don't get one. I don't get any because it's bad enough with my arboreals - I sooo much prefer my nice terrestrial opportunistic burrowers that hang out in the open most of the time.
 

Kenny

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Aug 7, 2002
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Agree

Hi

Couldn't agree more with you CM.

I have my arboels and I have had the luck to get a couple of them to do real look-into lairs the Irminia is one of them, but burrowers, nah.

They are lovely looking, but they give me more the feeling that one could have an empty cage the same as to have one with a burrowing T in it.:rolleyes:

My Earth tiger, that is opportunistic as I've been told and it have choose to do the burrower-thing for now,( it's going for the 2 inch mark and have molted once ) and I didn't have that much substrate in there , but enough for burrowing apperently and I have seen it , maybe, 3 - 4 times in 2 - 3 months.

My Pulchra is my funniest, digging, messing around and allways for "show".:)
My bigger versicolor is also very out-side active.
 

JacenBeers

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I have a friend who was raising a bunch of B albopilosum juveniles and they were all heavy burrowers. He didnt like not seing them so he tried to give them less substrate. Some of them went off of food and started thinging out and some were fine. One of them just paced the cage all day and didnt do anything but walk around.
 

Code Monkey

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If by juveniles, you mean wee ones, no wonder your friend had problems - I let slings and small juves burrow if they want. In my experience almost all Brachypelma burrow as slings, heck, most slings except arboreals burrow. They mostly come out into the open at the 2-3" mark. I give everybody a hide but once they're 3"+ I don't provide enough substrate for them to burrow and haven't had an issue.
 

Tranz

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Sep 18, 2002
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Originally posted by Code Monkey
If by juveniles, you mean wee ones, no wonder your friend had problems - I let slings and small juves burrow if they want. In my experience almost all Brachypelma burrow as slings, heck, most slings except arboreals burrow. They mostly come out into the open at the 2-3" mark. I give everybody a hide but once they're 3"+ I don't provide enough substrate for them to burrow and haven't had an issue.
I've watched my G. Pulchra sling burrow and rearrange things, and it strikes me as rigorous mental and physical exercise for the spider. I would tend to think that it's better for the spider to exercise like this than to do nothing - but perhaps I'm inappropriately projecting human values onto spiders.

If you took two groups of identical spiders and put one group in cages where they couldn't burrow, and another group where they not only could burrow, but were forced to rebuild their burrows every few months, I wonder which one would live longer, and have less morbidity.
 
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