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- Jul 22, 2002
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An agonistic stimulus promotes a given behavior (and an antagonistic one inhibits a given behavior).
Also, saying that they evolved to live in the rain forests is probably incorrect. They've been around as a species a long time before there were any rain forests in South America given the recentness of the last ice age. I'm not familiar with what fossil data there is to say one way or another, but it's unlikely that many current theraphosids originated in the same environment they're found in today. They just happen to be adapted for that niche.
As for your example, I never said that wasn't how it would have worked but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with survival needs and based on a number of keepers I know of who keep blondi dry with water dish for years on end, I'm saying the hypothesis that they need the moisture is very weak.
EDIT:
As an analogy: evolutionarily speaking, we've got responses to refined sugar that are very similar to something like cocaine elicits. It provides a strong stimulus to seek out and consume foods high in sugars. Now, in a wild environment where we're living hand to mouth this was a great behavioral response. Humans are "captive" nowadays, though, and there is no limit to sugar or any other type of food source for most of us. Yet, we still have that predilection towards the sugary foods.
Now, consuming lots of sugary foods isn't toxic, and depending on your base metabolism might even be good to an extent. Regardless, though, it is definitely not a behavior necessary for survival any more AND it carries a lot of correlated problems with it including increased amounts of diabetes, obesity, and tooth decay with the species as a whole.
In the wild, seeking out moist environs for such a large animal which depends on internal moisture for locomotion and hunting as well as the usual functions is a survival advantage that I am sure outweighed any potential problems. Now, we keep them in captivity and it will still instinctively seek out the moist environment even though we know that this increases the likelihood of potentially fatal fungal infections as well as increasing the likelihood of mites, bacteria, and other fungal problems. If slowly changed over from a moist environment to a dry one, we can't show any downside.
So, just because the spider seeks out the moisture like a fat woman hugging a poodle going for the snickers bar while she refills her gas tank, it doesn't mean there's anything actually beneficial about the behavior in captivity and at least some reason to believe there are detriments that argue against allowing that behavior free reign.
Also, saying that they evolved to live in the rain forests is probably incorrect. They've been around as a species a long time before there were any rain forests in South America given the recentness of the last ice age. I'm not familiar with what fossil data there is to say one way or another, but it's unlikely that many current theraphosids originated in the same environment they're found in today. They just happen to be adapted for that niche.
As for your example, I never said that wasn't how it would have worked but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with survival needs and based on a number of keepers I know of who keep blondi dry with water dish for years on end, I'm saying the hypothesis that they need the moisture is very weak.
EDIT:
As an analogy: evolutionarily speaking, we've got responses to refined sugar that are very similar to something like cocaine elicits. It provides a strong stimulus to seek out and consume foods high in sugars. Now, in a wild environment where we're living hand to mouth this was a great behavioral response. Humans are "captive" nowadays, though, and there is no limit to sugar or any other type of food source for most of us. Yet, we still have that predilection towards the sugary foods.
Now, consuming lots of sugary foods isn't toxic, and depending on your base metabolism might even be good to an extent. Regardless, though, it is definitely not a behavior necessary for survival any more AND it carries a lot of correlated problems with it including increased amounts of diabetes, obesity, and tooth decay with the species as a whole.
In the wild, seeking out moist environs for such a large animal which depends on internal moisture for locomotion and hunting as well as the usual functions is a survival advantage that I am sure outweighed any potential problems. Now, we keep them in captivity and it will still instinctively seek out the moist environment even though we know that this increases the likelihood of potentially fatal fungal infections as well as increasing the likelihood of mites, bacteria, and other fungal problems. If slowly changed over from a moist environment to a dry one, we can't show any downside.
So, just because the spider seeks out the moisture like a fat woman hugging a poodle going for the snickers bar while she refills her gas tank, it doesn't mean there's anything actually beneficial about the behavior in captivity and at least some reason to believe there are detriments that argue against allowing that behavior free reign.
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