Do tarantulas sleep?

[Toxoderidae]

Sometimes I'll watch my communal pokies, and they'll sit very close to eachother, stretch out and go still. Sometimes for hours, sometimes for minutes. Are they sleeping? As this is a very different stretch from their typical "I'm just sitting here" stance. (I am getting a new tank this week to separate them, as I feel I have too few to risk it)

 

[Chris11]

I wouldnt necessarily call it sleeping that i think they do.... I think its like how fish sleep, theyre bodies go into an 'auto-pilot' and they rest like that. I think spiders are totally aware no matter if theyre asleep or not.

 

[Chris LXXIX]

Yes. And they dream too. I love to watch that hole under the cork bark where my 0.1 Pelinobius muticus lives and stay, she's my baby.
She sleeps, and dreams:

Dream a bit of style
We'd dream a bunch of friends
Dream each others smile
And dream it never ends

Just replace "friends" with dubia/crickets.

 

[Radium]

I think they have a standby mode, because there are definitely times my tarantulas don't notice me moving around right in front of them until I make some kind of noise or vibration. I prefer to call it "communing with the mothership."

 

[Chris LXXIX]

I prefer to call it "communing with the mothership."

Or like the Winter Lantern of Bloodborne™, when they sing, lol, thinks to T's with that sound

 

[darkness975]

Honestly I would not call it sleeping so much as a type of "rest mode"

 

[TownesVanZandt]

I think they have a standby mode, because there are definitely times my tarantulas don't notice me moving around right in front of them until I make some kind of noise or vibration. I prefer to call it "communing with the mothership."

I don´t know if tarantulas truly sleeps or not, but I can fully relate to the concept of being in that state that you describe . After finishing my university degree, I moved to a country in Southeast Europe where I had to find work at a call center of a big international company in order to make a living. We, the poor workers, had to work awkward shifts that wasn´t easy to incorporate into a normal sleeping pattern. As a result I resorted to substances related to, but considerably stronger, than coffee. After days with practically no sleep at all I found myself at work, pretending to be answering e-mails at the computer. In reality I was sleeping with my eyes wide open while typing gibberish. I didn´t pay any notice to my surroundings until some of my co-workers walked up to me and suddenly awakened me from the state of sleeping/"communing with the mothership" by asking me some questions about something job-related. I have ever since considered the "sleep"-state of tarantulas as something similar. They are there somehow, looking awake at a distance, but in reality they are far gone

 

[Radium]

I don´t know if tarantulas truly sleeps or not, but I can fully relate to the concept of being in that state that you describe . After finishing my university degree, I moved to a country in Southeast Europe where I had to find work at a call center of a big international company in order to make a living. We, the poor workers, had to work awkward shifts that wasn´t easy to incorporate into a normal sleeping pattern. As a result I resorted to substances related to, but considerably stronger, than coffee. After days with practically no sleep at all I found myself at work, pretending to be answering e-mails at the computer. In reality I was sleeping with my eyes wide open while typing gibberish. I didn´t pay any notice to my surroundings until some of my co-workers walked up to me and suddenly awakened me from the state of sleeping/"communing with the mothership" by asking me some questions about something job-related. I have ever since considered the "sleep"-state of tarantulas as something similar. They are there somehow, looking awake at a distance, but in reality they are far gone

Yeah, I've also perfected napping at my desk - being asleep enough to get some restorative value, but awake enough to snap out of it as soon as anyone's in that part of the hallway. Not much different from what cats (and maybe tarantulas) do.

 

[Starantula]

I like to think of them as entering a motion sensor mode. Like one of those things you can get that'll come alive when its sensors clock you walking into a room...except without the shouting at you part.

 

[viper69]

I don't know if they truly sleep either. But there have been a few times with a few of my adult females during cage maintenance where they were definitely not in their usual positions, and then all of a sudden they got up on all 8. It literally looked like as if they were surprised at the least, and possibly in some rest/sleep state. I don't see it often, but the few times I've seen it, it's rather remarkable to catch them off guard in the manners I have observed.

 

[BobGrill]

I'm sure they have periods of rest much like fish and other more primitive animals, but I wouldn't go so far as to call it sleeping.

 

[Quixtar]

It would be incredibly boring to be a tarantula, but I guess I wouldn't know the concept of boredom if I were one.

 

[Chris LXXIX]

It would be incredibly boring to be a tarantula, but I guess I wouldn't know the concept of boredom if I were one.

Ah ah