How Do T’s Eat?

[TOwner14]

I put a baby roach in my slings enclosure so my T can eat obviously but in the morning when I woke up I only found a hollow shell of the roach. Don’t T’s eat whole or does that happen once they grow older?

 

[Smotzer]

They dont eat like we do, they inject digestive enzymes into the prey and liquify the insides and suck it up. They do not eat solid foods nor eat prey whole. They have what is called a sucking stomach that allows them to draw liquids in for further digestion.

Since you have a new animal i highly recommend you start to read up on basic tarantula and larger spectrum arachnid anatomy.

 

[Conor10]

T’s use their venom to turn the prey into a smoothie and leave a shell behind.

 

[AphonopelmaTX]

I put a baby roach in my slings enclosure so my T can eat obviously but in the morning when I woke up I only found a hollow shell of the roach. Don’t T’s eat whole or does that happen once they grow older?

A hollow shell as in a whole complete shell? If you found a complete shell, then the baby roach molted. Tarantulas chew up their food by crushing it between the fang and bottom of the chelicera where tooth like structures are present while regurgitating digestive fluid on it. The resulting fluid is then sucked up. It would be highly unusual to find a complete shell, but typical to find bits and pieces of shell.

 

[viper69]

I put a baby roach in my slings enclosure so my T can eat obviously but in the morning when I woke up I only found a hollow shell of the roach. Don’t T’s eat whole or does that happen once they grow older?

Google

Ts leave a bolus behind when they completely eat.

 

[The Grym Reaper]

Tarantulas subdue their prey (either via the injection of venom, or via massive trauma), they then wrap the prey in webbing and proceed to consume it by regurgitating digestive fluids onto it while mashing it up with their chelicerae to liquefy the insides so that they can suck it up (the webbing stops it all from falling apart in the process), by the time they're done all that should be left is a small ball of indigestible remains called a bolus.

That little ball (a little under 1cm in diameter) in the picture below used to be 3 adult crickets.

 

[Matt Man]

they make bug smoothies and slurp and leave the 'cup' behind