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Does anyone here have experience with keeping Heteropoda maxima? If so, what is their lifespan, what kind of care do they need , etc. Also where can you buy them? I can't find them anywhere.
Heteropoda maxima
- Thread starter Driller64
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At present Dr. Jager is the sole authority on Maxima. (Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum). It is my understanding they are extremely rare and at his request, the locations they have been found is being kept a secret. If they do turn up in the commercial trade they will almost certainly be coming from the black market in violation of a number of laws restricting trade of endangered species.
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I'm so on the fence about them becoming available in the trade. I'd LOVE to have one, but I don't want the wild populations to suffer because of our desire to have them in captivity. Plus the ecological ramifications of people going to collect them, moving rocks about and all of the other ways that they'd try to catch them.
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So what you're saying is they're impossible to obtain? 
Also I didn't know they were endangered.
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Also I didn't know they were endangered.
Sent from my SGH-T589 using Tapatalk 2
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H Maxima was discovered by Dr. Jaeger (spelling corrected) around 2001 in a remote cave in Laos in the Mekhong river valley region. That region, and a lot of S.E. Asia, remains unexplored for the most part. Examples: The worlds largest cave was discovered in Viet Nam very recently. The world reknown temple complex, Angkhor Wat, has only about 10% of the entire complex, city, unearthed from the jungle.
It is safe to assume H Maxima lives in many caves yet undiscovered in the region. The caves themselves can be extremely difficult to access and even more difficult to explore. Many contain vast piles of rock scree, thousands of tons, which provide the perfect safe habitat for the spider and quite likely, a lot of other animals. Shifting the rocks, which in many places, weigh several tons each, and locating a cooperative sparassid of mammoth proportions, ... imagine picking up a drop of mercury with a pair of pliers.
Be that as it may, Laos is also home to over a million Hmong. Being rather mercenary hunter gatherers, it would be relatively easy to throw some money about and employ a small army of spider hunters. Perhaps depriving the world of a part of it's biological heritage in the process.
How far does this thread need to go?
It is safe to assume H Maxima lives in many caves yet undiscovered in the region. The caves themselves can be extremely difficult to access and even more difficult to explore. Many contain vast piles of rock scree, thousands of tons, which provide the perfect safe habitat for the spider and quite likely, a lot of other animals. Shifting the rocks, which in many places, weigh several tons each, and locating a cooperative sparassid of mammoth proportions, ... imagine picking up a drop of mercury with a pair of pliers.
Be that as it may, Laos is also home to over a million Hmong. Being rather mercenary hunter gatherers, it would be relatively easy to throw some money about and employ a small army of spider hunters. Perhaps depriving the world of a part of it's biological heritage in the process.
How far does this thread need to go?