Is this normal? Did this tarantula come from the same thing as a puppy mill?

Pseudo

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My Oklahoma brown tarantula doesn't mind being picked up. Considering my son loves her, she has gotten very use to being handled here and there.

My pink toe is nervous around people. However, he/she doesn't act like he is going to be murdered. You can poke his/her butt until he/she goes into a container. Being in a container doesn't make him/her nervous or anything like that. He/she doesn't run when an insect is placed near him/her to eat, etc. (Sex unknown)

The problem is my third tarantula I received today (a full grown that is known for a docile temperament). As soon as I let her out of her box from the mail, she bolted to the door. She attempted to jump to her death while being placed in a container for movement. She is afraid to even check out her hides. She has a coconut hut and a half bark thing. I had to prod her until she went into the coconut. Now she stays in the coconut, afraid to come out and see the other hide. Every time a hand goes in, she acts like she is about to be murdered. Running in fear, trying to climb out to escape the hand, etc. I fear what life she had before. What can I do to help her calm down...at least to the point that she knows a hand isn't out to kill her? Like to the pink toe level...knows he/she isn't going to be murdered but doesn't like to be handled.
 

Pseudo

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Pictures would help. Also, you shouldn't handle tarantulas.
Pictures cannot describe a tarantula who feels scared to death. I just need some pointers on how to get her to feeling secure in her own home. Based on the research, I can tell you it is a docile species that is good for beginners. The community is torn on handling tarantulas which wasn't what I asked for an opinion on. I also do not handle my pink toe. Thanks though.

edit: I will also add the tarantula appears healthy and fine otherwise. Please don't turn my thread into a matter of opinion unrelated to the topic.
 

boina

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What species is it?

And yes, that behaviour is completely normal.
 

Pseudo

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What species is it?

And yes, that behaviour is completely normal.
I don't remember the exact species since I just got it today, but thank you for reassuring me. I was scared it had a terrible life prior. ;_;
 

chanda

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Pictures cannot describe a tarantula who feels scared to death. I just need some pointers on how to get her to feeling secure in her own home. Based on the research, I can tell you it is a docile species that is good for beginners. The community is torn on handling tarantulas which wasn't what I asked for an opinion on. I also do not handle my pink toe. Thanks though.

edit: I will also add the tarantula appears healthy and fine otherwise. Please don't turn my thread into a matter of opinion unrelated to the topic.
Actually, pictures of both the tarantula and the enclosure can be helpful, as would the species of the tarantula. Different species have different behaviors and different care requirements. Pictures would allow us to see if there is anything in the tarantula's environment that might be potentially dangerous to it or that might be stressing it out. A cage that is too big or too small, that has inadequate substrate for burrowing, insufficient hiding places or anchor points for webs, too much or too little moisture, the wrong kind of substrate, or other issues can be stressful to the spider. Too much vertical height in a cage for a terrestrial species can lead to a fatal fall injury. Also, pictures of the tarantula itself can give clues both to the mood and the overall health of the tarantula, such as whether it might be pre-molt, if it is dehydrated or underfed, or if it appears sick or injured.

As far as getting the tarantula to feel more secure, once you've determined that the home you're providing is suitable, the best thing you can do is give her time. Imagine you have just been snatched up from your home, stuffed in a tiny box, then bumped around in a shipping container for a few days - all with no idea what is being done to you or why. Your entire world has basically been turned upside down, and then, just when you're starting to get used to the small, dark, jostling container, someone dumps you out into a strange new place with bright lights and large, scary-looking potential predators poking and prodding you. You'd be terrified.

Your spider needs time to acclimate to her new enclosure. Give her privacy and low lights or darkness (tarantulas are naturally noctornal) while she calms down. When she is ready, she will begin exploring her new environment - and making herself at home by digging a burrow, making web tunnels, or whatever she needs to do to feel secure. When she has created a "safe space" for herself where she can retreat when she feels threatened, she will be a lot more comfortable and less frightened. That said, she may always be frightned when you reach into her enclosure because she is not capable of recognizing you as a "friend" or benevolent figure. As far as she is concerned, you will always be a big, scary threat that might decide to eat her at any given moment. The less you reach in and poke or prod her, the happier she will be.
 

OliverWhatever

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Tarantulas hardly have the mental capacities to suffer from trauma.
Give it time to settle in, and it will calm down.
 

Devin B

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As others have stated its best not to handle your tarantulas. It doesnt help the tarantula at all and only puts you in danger of being bitten and the tarantula in danger of injury. Most people treat them as fish, a look but dont touch kind of animal.

One thing you should be aware of is that these are wild animals, they can and will have mood swings. Never count on a tarantula to always be docile.
 

BC1579

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Are wild caught more prone to this type of behavior as opposed to captive bred? I know they're both still wild animals, but I feel like CB at least have an advantage in regards to being comfortable in their surroundings.
 

cold blood

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Are wild caught more prone to this type of behavior as opposed to captive bred? I know they're both still wild animals, but I feel like CB at least have an advantage in regards to being comfortable in their surroundings.
no, a tarntula has no idea where it was born.
 

RemyZee

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As others have said, You need to leave her be and let her settle in. Keep a water bowl available with fresh water, and just leave her alone.

“Docile” beginner species aren’t always docile. It can depend on the individual T. Again, if you could find out and share the species name that would be very helpful. Did the seller at least give you a common name? As has been stated, pictures would be immensely helpful.
 

Pseudo

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As others have said, You need to leave her be and let her settle in. Keep a water bowl available with fresh water, and just leave her alone.

“Docile” beginner species aren’t always docile. It can depend on the individual T. Again, if you could find out and share the species name that would be very helpful. Did the seller at least give you a common name? As has been stated, pictures would be immensely helpful.
Sorry, was in bed since making this post and had a few things to do. I will try to get pictures up in the next few hours.
 

chanda

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Are wild caught more prone to this type of behavior as opposed to captive bred? I know they're both still wild animals, but I feel like CB at least have an advantage in regards to being comfortable in their surroundings.
Tarantulas operate almost exclusively at the level of instinct. They are not capable of learning that you are their friend or that they are in a totally safe, predator-free environment, regardless of whether they are wild caught or captive bred going back a dozen generations.

As far as they are concerned, all other living creatures can be assigned to just a very few categories: food, mate, or potential threat/predator. If it's small enough to eat - and you are hungry - eat it. If you are not hungry and it is too small to be a threat, ignore it (or kill it, just to be safe). If it's bigger than you are - or just making you nervous for any reason - run away and hide, launch a barrage of itchy, burning hairs at it, or - if you feel trapped or cornered - attempt to intimidate it with a threat pose and, if that doesn't work, bite it. If you are a mature male with emboli full of sperm and it is a mature female, attempt to mate with her and hope you don't get eaten.

What they can learn is where their "safe space" is, whether that safe space is a burrow, a web tunnel, a dirt curtain, or a hide. Identifying a safe retreat will lead to a calmer spider because at least they "know" where to run to when a potential threat presents itself. This is why tarantulas are typically more stressed and skittish following a rehouse - they have yet to establish a new safe space, so every time a potential threat presents itself - such as heavy, human footsteps shaking the floor, or large, moving objects passing between the cage and the light source, or the lid of the enclosure opening and closing, or a big, scary hand intruding on the cage - they panic because, as far as the spider is concerned, any of those things might be a predator that wants to eat them - and they are trapped in an unfamiliar box with nowhere to run.

They are also capable of "learning" certain limited responses through basic conditioning. For example, I have a number of spiders that have learned that the cage lid opening means food will be forthcoming, so rather than running away, they may approach the opening. This makes for fun feedings as they will sometimes snatch the crickets out of mid-air rather than letting them drop and hunting for them later. It doesn't seem to matter whether they are captive bred or wild caught, though - the conditioning just happens over time. However, even the spiders that have acquired a feeding response will run and hide following a rehouse, until they have established a place where they feel secure in the new environment.

The one place where captive bred specimens have an advantage over their wild caught counterparts is that sometimes wild caught specimens will come with parasites - which may not become apparent until weeks or months later, when the spider abruptly sickens and dies.
 

boina

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Tarantulas operate almost exclusively at the level of instinct.
No, they don't. No they don't. No...

You just wrote two paragraphs about some ways they can learn, so why do you put this completely misleading sentence at the beginning? Having a simple view of the world (food - threat - mating) doesn't mean they run on instinct alone. They can learn and they do learn - not like a mammal of course, but still. They do NOT operate exclusively on instinct. You even said so yourself a few sentences further down. Of course they have no concept of "friend" but they are capable of learning that a human hand isn't a threat through habituation, not conditioning.

No, I do not promote handling. I'm very much against it because it poses a danger to the tarantula for many reasons. But I'm even more against twisting or ignoring all the evidence of decades of studies in invertebrate learning just to make a point.
 

chanda

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No, they don't. No they don't. No...

You just wrote two paragraphs about some ways they can learn, so why do you put this completely misleading sentence at the beginning? Having a simple view of the world (food - threat - mating) doesn't mean they run on instinct alone. They can learn and they do learn - not like a mammal of course, but still. They do NOT operate exclusively on instinct. You even said so yourself a few sentences further down. Of course they have no concept of "friend" but they are capable of learning that a human hand isn't a threat through habituation, not conditioning.

No, I do not promote handling. I'm very much against it because it poses a danger to the tarantula for many reasons. But I'm even more against twisting or ignoring all the evidence of decades of studies in invertebrate learning just to make a point.
I never said they operate exclusively on instinct. I said almost exclusively.
 

cold blood

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Tarantulas operate almost exclusively at the level of instinct
The word "almost", makes the statement true IMO....I see your point Boina, but fact is they are instinctual the vast majority of time...yep, there's exceptions, but that's where the word almost comes in.
 

boina

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I never said they operate exclusively on instinct. I said almost exclusively.
The word "almost", makes the statement true IMO....I see your point Boina, but fact is they are instinctual the vast majority of time...yep, there's exceptions, but that's where the word almost comes in.
I disagree even with the almost. Running on instinct means a tarantula will react exactly the same to the same clues. That's simply not true. It's astonishingly easy to do a bit of conditioning with tarantulas. They learn all the time - it's not the exception it's the norm. Yes, instincts play a large role:
Hunger -> search for food, but how they do that is modified by experience, i.e. learning. How they react to a threat is modified by learning. I conditioned a few of my tarantulas to move off when I want to clean their water dish, mainly my large and aggressive A. genic and L. klugi, simply by poking them with a long brush and holding the brush in place when the tarantula attacked. After a while they gave up and moved off. That 'while' became shorter and shorter and now I poke them - with the same brush every time - and they just move away. Everything they do, every instinct, is modified by learning, as in any other invertebrate tested.

The following text is from the book 'Invertebrate learning and memory':

Associative learning is a capacity present in all animals with a nervous system, which allows extracting the logical structure of the world by evaluating the coincidental order of events. It leads to the generation and storage of memories, which can be retrieved in appropriate circumstances to provide adaptive responses to a changing environment. Invertebrates, with their less complex and accessible nervous systems have been pivotal organisms to understand learning and memory at the behavioral, cellular and molecular level. Not only do they exhibit different forms of associative learning, from Pavlovian to operant, from elemental to non-elemental ones, but their memory is also organized following basic principles common to vertebrates.
Does that sound like almost exclusivly instinctual to you?
 

cold blood

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It's astonishingly easy to do a bit of conditioning with tarantulas.
Its just as, maybe even easier, to condition a plant. Like the plant, knowing to grow toward the sun isn't because they learned anything about the sun.

Utilizing an animal's instincts is the easiest way to condition them to things.
I conditioned a few of my tarantulas to move off when I want to clean their water dish,
There ya go,...conditioned.:kiss: :astonished:

Yes, they can learn, you convinced me on that before today, but its not like their lives are spent learning, like a mammal for instance, who's brain is processing info every second its awake...and even when its not actually. With a t, these instances of learning are uncommon as a t may not even present its self to the world on a regular basis (this alone makes "almost" work) and I'm just not sure just how capable that ganglion is.....their learning is based on their instincts more often than not. Their "brains" do more controlling of function than anything else.....With a ganglion, they're certainly not built to be smart, or to learn on anything but a minimalist level.....therefore "almost";)
 

boina

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Like the plant, knowing to grow toward the sun isn't because they learned anything about the sun.
A plant will always grow towards the sun. A tarantula can modify it's behaviour to go against it's instinct. The point is: you can't condition a plant NOT to grow towards the sun. You can condition a tarantula not to show food aggression under specific circumstances. The comparison with the plant doesn't work. Conditioning by definition does not work without memory and learning. And moving away is not an uncontrollable reflex, like Pavlovs salivating dogs, but deliberate behaviour.

Have you read the quote I provided? Invertebrates are used as model organisms to study vertebrate learning - because the mechanisms are exactly the same. Invertebrates learn on a more limited basis, but just the same as vertebrates they spend all their life learning and the molecular mechanisms of processing information are exactly the same. A ganglion is good enough for that - science has proven that a while ago. Spending days in the same place they still learn that place is safe.

their learning is based on their instincts more often than not.
Of course it is but why does that make the 'learning' somehow to 'not learning'? A mammal is born with nothing but instincts and then it starts to learn and modify these instincts. Learning is done to modify instinctive behaviour - in all animals.

Maybe our definition of learning is not the same. If by learning you mean: doing tricks and play fetch - no a tarantula can't do that. But science defines learning as processing information and forming a memory and modify behaviour accordingly, e.g. to adapt to different circumstances. Tarantulas do well enough on that level. They are not little 8-legged machines that will always react the same to the same stimulus.
 
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