Caribena versicolor feeding changes

Ratmosphere

Arachnoking
Active Member
Joined
Aug 23, 2015
Messages
2,464
As you all may know, I love Caribena versicolor. It's my favorite species of all time. As WE all know, all spiders have their different personalities.

A trait one of my Caribena versicolor slings had was it refused to eat live prey. Hard to believe, and I constantly tried to feed it live food with no avail so I switched to pre-killed.

I fed the spider this way for a year and a half and more, until she hit the sub adult phase. Something changed in her, she now would not take ANY pre-killed prey and discarded them from her web. I noticed her constructing webs lower to the ground and waiting on this web.

I tried live crickets at this point. While I have not witnessed her hunt any, I have seen her with a live cricket in her mouth and bolus' all throughout her enclosure.

Pretty wild to see a behavioral change like this!
 

A guy

Arachnobaron
Active Member
Joined
Aug 8, 2020
Messages
582
As you all may know, I love Caribena versicolor. It's my favorite species of all time. As WE all know, all spiders have their different personalities.

A trait one of my Caribena versicolor slings had was it refused to eat live prey. Hard to believe, and I constantly tried to feed it live food with no avail so I switched to pre-killed.

I fed the spider this way for a year and a half and more, until she hit the sub adult phase. Something changed in her, she now would not take ANY pre-killed prey and discarded them from her web. I noticed her constructing webs lower to the ground and waiting on this web.

I tried live crickets at this point. While I have not witnessed her hunt any, I have seen her with a live cricket in her mouth and bolus' all throughout her enclosure.

Pretty wild to see a behavioral change like this!
I have lots of specimens of different species suddenly refuse everything that I offer them except live crickets. Before, they would eat superworms, hornworms,etc but now they wouldn't touch anything else other than live crickets.

This is a case with my Grammostola anthracina, Poecilotheria smithi, Typhochlaena seladonia, Grammostola alticeps. Just to name a few.
 

Arachnophobphile

Arachnoprince
Active Member
Joined
Dec 24, 2018
Messages
1,022
As you all may know, I love Caribena versicolor. It's my favorite species of all time. As WE all know, all spiders have their different personalities.

A trait one of my Caribena versicolor slings had was it refused to eat live prey. Hard to believe, and I constantly tried to feed it live food with no avail so I switched to pre-killed.

I fed the spider this way for a year and a half and more, until she hit the sub adult phase. Something changed in her, she now would not take ANY pre-killed prey and discarded them from her web. I noticed her constructing webs lower to the ground and waiting on this web.

I tried live crickets at this point. While I have not witnessed her hunt any, I have seen her with a live cricket in her mouth and bolus' all throughout her enclosure.

Pretty wild to see a behavioral change like this!
My versicolor went through changes like that when I had him.

Crickets and roaches I have discovered work best for sub-adult on up tarantulas.
 
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