Grammostola aureostriata

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Hilikus311

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Hey i woke up this morning and found that my 3/4" sling had dug a hole about half an inch down into the substrate of the 2x2x4" containter i have it in. I thought they didn't burrow? could be wrong but yeah.:?
 
Paramite

Paramite

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They are called Grammostola pulchripes now.

But to answer your question, almost all tarantulas burrow when they are that small.
 
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gvfarns

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Yeah, bit of a nasty surprise for someone who gets a sling for the first time. I've occasionally tried to discourage that behavior by keeping them on shallow substrate. Bit of an uphill battle, though. They grow up soon enough. Well, in Grammostola's case, "soon enough" means "eventually."
 
Mushroom Spore

Mushroom Spore

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gvfarns said:
I've occasionally tried to discourage that behavior by keeping them on shallow substrate.
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Why? If they need to burrow, they need to burrow.

I wouldn't call it a "nasty surprise." It's just burrowing, it's not like it had parasites and wiped out half your collection or something. {D And they do grow out of it, as mentioned. Just let them feel safe, you'll have a huge spider to stare at before too long.
 
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gvfarns

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Mushroom Spore said:
Why? If they need to burrow, they need to burrow.

I wouldn't call it a "nasty surprise." It's just burrowing, it's not like it had parasites and wiped out half your collection or something. {D And they do grow out of it, as mentioned. Just let them feel safe, you'll have a huge spider to stare at before too long.
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"Need" is a subjective term in this case. They won't die without burrowing, and there are no predators here to kill them if they can't. I view tarantulas as display animals, so if my display apparently consists of just a box of dirt, that's a nasty surprise for me.

They don't have any feelings to hurt if their environment is not conducive to doing the earthworm thing.
 
MizM

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Paramite said:
I'm aware that you're clearly much more experienced than I am, but it's stupid to asume that one website would be the absolute source of taxonomy. ;) Especially when other sites have a lot of information about it written by the people, who study these things.
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Um, that site IS the list.
 
Mushroom Spore

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gvfarns said:
They don't have any feelings to hurt if their environment is not conducive to doing the earthworm thing.
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Let's not get ridiculous - I never implied anything of the sort ("feeling safe" is not the same as the tarantula writing an angsty livejournal entry about it). However, not allowing them to burrow is like not allowing them a hide. If they need to hide themselves and cannot do so, you're bringing stress into the equation. Tarantulas may be fairly simple creatures, but I don't think that makes it okay to deny whatever behaviors their instincts tell them are necessary. (EDIT: I'll grant that the question of whether to breed is a whole other issue. There are many cases where a T keeper is just not in a position to deal with breeding, and mature males are easily sent to someone else. But more major behaviors like hiding for a molt, or burrowing, or whatever else...those are fairly important and very easy for even a novice keeper to allow.)

They also do not have the mental capacity to realize that there are no predators, I have no idea why you brought that up. The tarantula will still be stressed if it feels unsafe and cannot burrow/hide, you can sit there and explain things logically to it all you want. :rolleyes:
 
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Hilikus311

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Paramite said:
...and this is one of the reasons why the hobby is such as mess, when it comes to species names.
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Well why even bother changing the name anyway i don't know much about species names and why, but seriously it had a name already? and your message was a lil condeisending don't you think
 
N

Newyork

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they don't burrow? tell that to my 3 inch chaco who's dug a burrow under her hide all the way down to the bottom back corner. ;P
 
MizM

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Hilikus311 said:
Well why even bother changing the name anyway i don't know much about species names and why, but seriously it had a name already? and your message was a lil condeisending don't you think
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With all of the new science available to us, and the increased interest in tarantulas, we are finding that some species were misclassified when first described.
 
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gvfarns

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Mushroom Spore said:
Let's not get ridiculous - I never implied anything of the sort ("feeling safe" is not the same as the tarantula writing an angsty livejournal entry about it). However, not allowing them to burrow is like not allowing them a hide. If they need to hide themselves and cannot do so, you're bringing stress into the equation. Tarantulas may be fairly simple creatures, but I don't think that makes it okay to deny whatever behaviors their instincts tell them are necessary. (EDIT: I'll grant that the question of whether to breed is a whole other issue. There are many cases where a T keeper is just not in a position to deal with breeding, and mature males are easily sent to someone else. But more major behaviors like hiding for a molt, or burrowing, or whatever else...those are fairly important and very easy for even a novice keeper to allow.)

They also do not have the mental capacity to realize that there are no predators, I have no idea why you brought that up. The tarantula will still be stressed if it feels unsafe and cannot burrow/hide, you can sit there and explain things logically to it all you want. :rolleyes:
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Hahaha. Well I guess what I meant to say is that the stress experienced by a sling that can't burrow doesn't cause me enough emotional anguish to make me willing to let it burrow away. If it had feelings, it would be a different matter. My slings don't die, and I can always see them (except when they defeat my endeavors to deny them burrowage). They grow up into well adjusted tarantulas and everyone's happy.

I didn't mean to be combative about it. I just guessed that people who think it's bad to deny a sling sufficient substrate to burrow do so out of concern for the T's emotional state, since their health is not much at issue. I don't happen to fall in that camp but I was guessing you did. I don't mean by that to imply that you misjudge tarantula intelligence or anything. Just supporting my opinion.
 
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