Can Tarantulas Hear?

[Tranz]

If not, can they perceive noise as vibration?

 

[johns]

I may be wrong, but tarantulas have fine sensory hairs, which permit them to pick up tremors, etc...

 

[Bearacuda42]

No they cant hear!

;P ;P =D :} No they dont hear but they do pick up vibrations just like JD said and they do pick up movements from the air from the hairs they have. Very good JD!!!!! ;P ;P :}

 

[johns]

Why, thank ya, B!

 

[The_Phantom]

DAMN. Now theres really no point in talking to them then is there ?? POO !

Naw, I know they cant hear me, but I lovem so I talk to em !

 

[Bearacuda42]

Hey!!! Bad habits...

;P ;P ;P Well i guess im not the only one with the habit of talking to my Ts.. I do it alot... Hehehehehe!!!! =D =D

 

[Code Monkey]

Maybe, maybe not. They definitely have highly specialised hairs for picking up vibrations and are capable of picking up vibrations in the air. So, just because they have no dedicated central organ like our ear drum-inner ear complex doesn't necessarily mean they don't "hear". After all, all hearing is is an interpretation of vibrations in the air in our brains that gives it a form we think of as sound.

So keep on talking to them. We may never have any idea exactly what they sense it as, but they do sense something. At the very least it gets them used to one indicator of your presence.

 

[Valael]

You'd think they'd be able to "hear" noises, especially loud ones since sound is really nothing more than rapid vibrations, but they really don't make any move when I vaccuum around them, or if I happen to play music loudly and the walls shake =p

 

[ithuriel]

loud noises

i guess the reason they dont move is that they have an instinct to freeze to try and avoid detection , only after they know they have definitely been discovered do they go into fight or flight mode

 

[Rookie]

all of the senses

While we're on the topic, do tarantulas smell? how do they know that a pinky mouse is food, but our hands are not? and though they have 8 eyes, they're pretty much blind, right? maybe i'm off on that one. if i need to know all of the nitty-gritty T info, I should probably learn the basics too
thanks,
The Rookie

 

[Valael]

My guess would be they can tell it's a small, living thing by the movements. If it's small enough, they chomp down.


As for frozen pinkies...Well, I'm not sure on that one -- has anyone ever gotten a T to eat a pre-killed pinky without dangling it in front of the T?

 

[MrDeranged]

All the time. I've never had to dangle them. Just toss them in where the T will run across them in their travels. The chemoreceptors in their feet are actually quite advanced and will pick up that they're good eating.

Scott

 

[Maelstrom]

Talking to T's

Heeh... I'm just glad I'm not the only one who talks to them.... now my boyfriend can stop making fun of me (HAHA yeah right!), but then again I talk to his cats too... most of the time to call them "spiderfood" when they've done something annoying.;P

 

[Pandora®©™]

Well I talk to mine anyway :wall: I mean it isn't worse then talking to some ppl :}

 

[reverendsterlin]

I thought hearing was the picking up of vibrations, and in that manner I suppose they do hear. But if more specifically your asking if they interperet vibrations on an audio scale similar to humans I figure no, they don't have the equipment for it. I think that vibration and chemical interpertation are the T's main perception of the world and that they are 'aware' when we speak, walk, move and would guess that something like music with continuous strong vibration would probably overload the T's ability to recognize/differenciate weaker vibrations. That said, the T seems pretty specialized anatomically to pick up vibrations and chemical changes so I would say that T's "hear" their environment better than we do ours.
Rev

 

[Windchaser]

As for frozen pinkies...Well, I'm not sure on that one -- has anyone ever gotten a T to eat a pre-killed pinky without dangling it in front of the T?

My daughter did an experiment for her science class to determine which food tarantulas preferred. She offered the tarantulas a pinkie mouse (previously frozen), a wax worm and a cricket. We removed the legs of the crikcet so it would stay in the same container as the other food items in an attempt to make the food offerings somewhat equal. We simply placed a small container with each food item in it in the tarantulas tank and recorded which they ate. With the exception of one tarantula that was in a pre-molt feeding pattern (that is, not eating), all the tarantulas had no problem locating the small bowl.

Unfortunately for her, she never got any conclusive results from her experiment, especially since half the tarantulas cleaned their plate, so to say, each feeding.

 

[Randolph XX()]

they can, but not sure they understand or not
sound=vibration

 

[hyena65]

I must confess... I talked to my T's also, but I stopped after he started talking back....Anyone else have this problem? And if you do, please note that I was just kidding!

 

[Ryand2]

Well a week or two ago i was holding my rose hair, my dog comes into the room and lays down for a minute or two, then my dog lets out 3 loud barks, my tarantula flipped out, so, suffice to say, she was able to pick up the noise through some means

 

[Lover of 8 legs]

What is sound? What is hearing? Listen to the lyrics of "The Sounds of Silence". Tarantulas hear through a slightly different mechanism than humans do (i.e. how they pick up the sensations). They also have a siginificantly different mechanism for interpreting the meaning of the sensations. Tarantulas tend to react to all sensory stimuli without interpretation (i.e. they run & hide when I open the hatch to feed). Humans filter stimuli by interpreting its significance. We can tune out a conversation to listen to something on TV. Have you ever been challenged with the phrase,"You're not listening!"? Tarantulas can't do that. Do they hear? Definitely! Are they listening? Mine are (LOL)