Looking for advice - Poecilotheria

[Garrick]

As Fat Albert would say:
"Hey hey hey- these ain't rattlesnakes. Don't go 'round talkin' 'bout medically signifcant if you don't know what you're sayin'. Bad for da hobby, and that ain't coool."
Sheeesh. . . if the amount of P. murinus bites I've gotten in one hour of digging through an importer's box from Tanzania to find a juvi male equated to the hype on the internet calling that species "HOT" (not to mention the mythological tales of a woman that died from one circulating two years ago). . . I'd be so on fire that you could grill a ribeye on my butt.
I'm not saying it's a pleasure to be bit, but I wouldn't be so quick to bandy about the words "medically significant" given what I've heard about ANY species (Poecilotheria included. I've seen it happen. Didn't look fun, but nor did the time I accidentally closed a car door on the same person's hand that was bit by my Pokie. Neither incident required emergency room care, though).

In fact, this whole thread is a lesson to me and I'm going to edit through my website to say,"Don't poke at it any more than you would a wasp nest" instead of saying, "Some people say this one has more potent venom than other tarantulas." Obviously, some people think they've got hand-size, eight-legged, cricket-eating cobras living in petpals. Such misinfo is bad, and could lead to the banning of mailing/selling spiders. . .probably much more quickly than the banning of car doors (which I'm sure have caused many more severe, possibly "medically significant," injuries than any tarantula).

-Garrick
eight

 

[Inuleki]

that's not what i was saying... i realize he has been keeping for a while at least, and was asking for an opinion on the genus.... which i gave...

 

[esmoot]

Originally posted by Inuleki
that's not what i was saying... i realize he has been keeping for a while at least, and was asking for an opinion on the genus.... which i gave...

Inuleki I don't think anyone is talking about you giving bad advice or anything like that. We got a bit off topic be cause AR flipped out on 2 different boards.

 

[Garrick]

Oh. . .I guess I shouldn't be a kook and rant without at least answering the original poster's question:
All Poecilotheria are some of the most beautiful tarantulas.
I think P. regalis, ornata, and rufilata are really pretty. I'd have to say P. rufilata is my favorite as far as looks. I don't think P. formosa, striata, subfusca, or fasciata are as stunning as the rest.
I've never seen an adult P. miranda or P. pederseni in real life (just babies), but there are plenty of pictures. I've never owned one of those two as I don't think they really compare in beauty to the former three.
I've only seen pics of P. metallica- I've never so much as seen a spiderling firsthand. The baby photos are stunning, but I've only seen a handful of adult photos. Seems the blue might fade to gray quite bit, but it still must be beautiful.
I've never seen more than a drawing and a taxonomic description of uniformis and smithi, so I'm unsure what to say about those.
I've owned a handful of P. regalis, two P. formosa, and two P. rufilata to adulthood. I'd go with either the rufilata or regalis. All of them grew quickly, but the formosa simply wasn't as good looking as the rest. One rufilata was my favorite, but I killed it (possibly due to moronically having pesticide on my hands while changing its water at one point. . .I'm still not sure).
I've NEVER had an issue with them "attacking" me, even while I had three regalis in one enclosure. I'd stick my grubby mitts in there all the time to clean up after them.
They are fast, so ensure they don't get loose. I had a large regalis evade capture for a good bit until my friend scooped her up. She did bite- he did not enjoy it. The spider didn't seem to like it either, but neither participant required medical attention.
I've scooched some adults with my hand a little (and held a few, but all of those were under 4" in legspan) with no issues. Just be really careful about their their speed and flightiness. I wouldn't stress about "safety" in fear of being bitten- just use common sense like you would with a cat or dog.
The big thing is if they get loose, you may never see them again.
Your pride n' joy may go zipping under a door or through an air conditioning vent- picture yourself trying to capture an arboreal, eight-legged mouse that's high on caffiene and then decide how secure you need to be with these pretty but very fast bugs. Get what you want, but make a nice enclosure and don't let them run away.

-Garrick
eight

 

[AudreyElizabeth]

Hmm, C. crawshayi? Seems like I read a bite report on this very forum.......

haven't bought a pokie yet, but if I did my first choice would be regalis,
cheaper, get fairly large, and are one of the most beautiful pokies that I have seen. Well, besides the metallica slings, BUT.....

 

[manville]

omg...guys just stop fighting..i am getting a couple of pokie soon and i think they are gorgeous...i dont think they kill ppl though cause really none of the tarantula do.. Dont scare me..hahaha

 

[Inuleki]

don't be scared off, just be prepared for how fast they are, that's my advice with em.... also, to go back to the original topic again, i also believe the fasciata is quite the bold pokie... the black and white contrasts that i've seen (in pictures, i've unfortunately never seen an adult up close) have just gorgeous patterns, both top and ventral (i feel weird referring to it as a dorsal view... i think sharks and fish)

anyways,
-Joshua

 

[Ultimate Instar]

I own P. regalis and P. metallica currently. They are all 2" slings but I wouldn't call them "difficult" Ts, at least so far. In fact, they are calmer than my Aviculariae. I'm not downplaying their speed, but most tarantulas are fast enough to bite you, _if they want_. Don't make them want to bite you. As for the arboreal baboon Ts, I consider them to be quite a bit more difficult than Pokies, so I do not keep them at this point. But with more experience and knowledge of handling techniques, I would consider owning them. JMHO.

Karen N.

 

[Ultimate Instar]

Garrick,
There's a pic of P. smithi on John Hoke's website, e-spiderworld.com, under the Species tab, then photogallery.

Karen N.

 

[Bjorgly]

I have heard from a few people that the P.ornata tends to be the most aggressive/defensive. I do not own any pokies, so perhaps if some other people could varify this it may help you choose.

I personally think anyone can keep any T as long as they fully understnad the responsibility that comes with each different species. Respect the T and it's space, use long forceps for cage maitenence, don't try to handle it, etc. and I think you will be okay.

Mark

 

[Code Monkey]

Ugh! Make the pain stop!

OK, my 2 cents on this mess.

Medically significant typically is taken to mean the injury/illness requires some degree of medical care,that's pretty much it. As such, although I know the skeptics think otherwise, calling Pokies medically signifant is not a stretch. Just because medicine is so ignorant on how to handle them, I think any venom which can result in several weeks of cramps/spasms would be considered medically significant as any doctor worth their salt would like to be able to treat it effectively to avoid such lingering effects. Our inability to treat it effectively which makes going to doctor or hospital useless does not magically make the effects de facto non medically significant.

Phillip's and other's very poor dog analogies tick me off. You want to talk about stretching the facts and creating deliberately misleading perceptions, these blow anything about Pokies out of the water. *Some* dogs pose a medically significant threat, this is true, but these are individual dogs and, at least in communities where people aren't going out of their way to encourage aggressive behavior, a small fraction of the family dogs out there. I'd trust my family dog over a dead & mounted B. smithi any day of the week to not cause injury to me or mine. Even when dogs are properly trained to be selectively aggressive, they're still a far cry from the threat level of even something like a G. pulchra - my friend's chow is a strong dog that could pretty much remove your extremities, and if you break into his house it's going to rightfully try - but at a word from its owner it will stand down. If you're being introduced to the dog for the first time all my friend has to do is tell the dog you're OK before it treats you like a friendly puppy; show me the tarantula you can do that with. Other than when injured in a lot of pain, most dogs aren't going to bite their owner, ever, and most dogs aren't going to bite anyone else, either. Any tarantula, no matter how "docile" may very well just decide to bite their owner after years of peaceful relations, it's the nature of the beast. If you want to be truthful, point out that a nervous or poorly trained and socialized dog can do far more damage to you than any tarantula, but to try and imply that Ts are anything like your average dog (or even a pet rat for that matter) in terms of threat level is to engage in deceptive practices of your own.

As for AR's outburst, yes, this hysteria needs to go. Pokies are fast and they are medically significant. When threatened they will often bite. That's pretty much the end of the known facts. If an owner is experienced in working with fast Ts in general and takes this under advisement, I doubt they pose any real threat.

Besides, if we go by frequency of bites, the real threat is all them damn G. rosea out there.

 

[Martin H.]

Hi,

Originally posted by Crotalus

As for medical significant venom I dont agree - no one have died from a poec bite or got their limbs amputated. I dont think they should be (or any tarantula) regarded as medical significant.

I don't know a definition for the term "medically significant" so I don't want to split hairs if you can use the term "medically significant" or not. Just a little story: I know one case (first hand) where somone got bitten by an adult Poecilotheria fasciata male. At the beginning he got very euphoric like under drugs, but suddenly he turned into the opposite and collapsed. The emergency physician which they called wasn't able to get him back in a approachable/addressable condition and took him to hospital to the station for intensive care! ...good luck he recovered and survived!
A friend of mine (also a tarantula keeper) and the neighbour of the bite victim was the first at the scene of accident (besides the wife of the victim). He wrote an article about it which will be printed soon in the DeArGe Mitteilungen, the Journal of the German Tarantula Society (= Deutsche Arachnologische Gesellschaft e. V.). At the moment we try to get the reports of the emergency physician and the hospital to include these information in the article too!

Originally posted by Crotalus

BTW, no theraphosid venom have caused a anaphylactic chock ...

A friend of mine got an anaphylactic chock caused by tarantulas – not by the venom BUT by the urticaiting hairs!! IMHO the urticating hairs and their "medically significance" are often underastimated! How does the lungs of someone look like who is keeping new world spiders for years and who is breathing in their urticating hairs which are all around in the t-room?
And also the direct harm they can cause. See for example these articles:

• CHANG, P. C. T., SOONG, H. K. & BARNETT, J. M. (1991): Corneal penetration by tarantula hairs. Br. J. Ophthalmol. 75: 253-254.
• COOKE, J. A., MILLER, F. H., GROVER, R. W. & DUFFY, J. L. (1973): Urticaria caused by tarantula hairs. Am. Jou. Trop. Med. Hygiene 22(1): 130-133.
• COOKE, J. A., ROTH, V. D. & MILLER, F. H. (1972): The urticating hairs of theraphosid spiders. Am. Mus. Novit. 2498: 1-43.
• HERED, R. W., SPAULDING, A. G., SANITATO, J. J. & WANDER, A. H. (1988): Ophthalmia nodosa caused by tarantula hairs. Ophthalmology 95(2): 166-169.
• KAUFMAN, S. C., J., C. S., CAPPS, S. C. & BEUERMAN, R. W. (1994): Cobfocal microscopy of comeal penetration by tarantula hairs. Scanning 16: 312-325.
• KREMMER, S., ROHRBACH, J. M., FROHN, A., ECKSTEIN, A. & THIEL, H.-J. (1995): Vogelspinnenhaare als Hornhautfremdkörper. Klein. Monatsbl. Augenheilkd. (206): 277-278.
• RATCLIFFE, B. C. (1977): A case tarantula-included papular dermatitis. J. Med. Ent. 13(6): 745-747.
• RUTZEN, A. R., WEISS, J. S. & HARRY, K. (1993): Tarantula hairs ophthalmia nodosa. Am. J. Ophthalmol. 116: 381-382.
• STULTING, R. D., HOOPER, R. J. & DWIGHT, C. H. (1983): Ocular injury caused by tarantula hairs. Am. J. Ophthalmol. 96: 118-119.

all the best,
Martin

 

[Henry Kane]

Re: Ugh! Make the pain stop!

Originally posted by Code Monkey
Our inability to treat it effectively which makes going to doctor or hospital useless does not magically make the effects de facto non medically significant.

You certainly have a point there. However, the (high) average number of bite victims that pull through ok despite inadequate medical treatment, wouldn't that have any bearing on the subject?
By the way, I'm absulutely not trying to argue the effects of a pokie bite. Truthfully, if I were bitten by one, I'm sure the first thought in my head would be to head to the doctor. I'm just a little blurry on the definition of "medically significant". I think Code cleared that up. Code, what is your reference for the definition of "medically significant"?

Atrax

 

[Code Monkey]

@Gary:
I pulled up a bunch of people arguing about the definition of medically significant with Google =D
That seemed to be the best consensus I could make of it with everything from air safety experts to drug companies bickering over the wording in documents (we're not the only ones ). If it required medical attention, fine, it was medically significant, if it didn't the nitpickers said it wasn't. Insurance companies are big on the vague definition as you might imagine.

Some examples are this one to do with skiiing or this one to do with sleep apnea.

Which introduces the issue of should we consider Pokies and other Ts with unpredictable effects potentially medically significant or just medically significant Me, I'm content to say that if something has caused heart palpitations, suppressed breathing, prolonged nervous issues, etc. we could call it medically signficant.

 

[Henry Kane]

Thanks for checking into it at least.
In general, I agree with the most realistic and self explanatory definition. It gets cloudy in regards to keeping our hobby's negative image at bay. Unfortunately the media and other weavers of urban folklore can take a phrase like "medically significant" and reeeealy make it go a long way...in the wrong direction of course.
I have always favored the "potentially significant" phrase in that respect. Besides, that phrase is still quite truthful. One may receive a dry bite, one may have a mild or no reaction to the venom but still, the potential exists for further complications.
If you give the "bad press" less rope to run with....

Atrax

 

[Crotalus]

Martin wrote:
"A friend of mine got an anaphylactic chock caused by tarantulas – not by the venom BUT by the urticaiting hairs!!"

I think thats a allergic reaction (I had that too) - not a anaphylactic chock.

EDIT: this article explains the difference between alleric and anaphylactic chock - Click here

/Lelle

 

[Phillip]

Very poor dog analogy huh Monkey? Why did that one bug ya? Perhaps the truth behind it? Sorry CM you usually seem to take the side of logic but in the great poke debate you seem to have lost that gift man. Let me try and help clear a few things up here.

1st off I did not say the family pooch was going to maul anyone but that you were at more risk from it than the T. Plain and simple pokes run 1st and bite when that doesn't work. The likelihood that you will ever be bitten in the 1st place unless ignorance causes you to restrain the T is very slim.

2nd Regardless of your opinion on the danger from your personal dog the ability of a dog to damage a human is far greater than that of any T even counting the small balls of fluff some folks call dogs. On the same topic all dogs regardless of temperment and training are capable of delivering a bite when they become old and cranky or hurt and feeling defensive about their injury. It doesn't mean the dog is malicious but even the best of dogs have bad days as infrequent as they may be.

3rd Onto the Medically significant topic Sorry to the paranoid ones but if treatment is not required for one to heal then it is not that significant in the great scheme of things. Society as a whole has become soft over the last few decades with our remote everything and our take it easy and be waited on hand and foot lifestyle. Discomfort is not as big of a deal as many folks make it out to be period. Hearbeat and breathing can both be affected by an anxiety attack also so before we blame the T let's try to keep in perspective that it may simply be human over reaction. Cramps for weeks... sorry but again not significant women go through week long cramps monthly and you dont see them flooding the ER with them. As far as Martins reference to a bite victim while I don't doubt that it happenned you have to consider that this individual could have been allergic or just plain had a severe and uncommon reaction do to being himself. Keep in mind folks some people can die from a bee sting. Hell some can be in a world of hurt from eating peanuts and folks have even died from a broken bone as extremely rare as that is. This does not mean that a broken arm or a jar of peanuts is lethal nor is is a medical danger to the vast majority of humans. I repeat as I have done so many times before NO ONE HAS EVER DIED FROM A T BITE. No one has lost a finger, had massive tissue damage, or anything short of feeling like crap for a few days. Gee a spider the size of your hand or larger bites you and you feel bad for a bit what a surprise huh.

Lastly what seems to be the case most often are the majority of the ones speaking up about the dangers of pokes don't keep any themselves and are merely going on what they have read and heard from old material and folks who have let their speed intimidate them. Yes there are folks that keep them and say the venom made them ill but guess what... despite being ill they are fine and well and still among us.

Sorry folks but trying to paint a nastier image of pokes than what they deserve is wrong.

Phil

 

[spiderfreak]

Originally posted by Martin H.


A friend of mine got an anaphylactic chock caused by tarantulas – not by the venom BUT by the urticaiting hairs!! IMHO the urticating hairs and their "medically significance" are often underastimated! How does the lungs of someone look like who is keeping new world spiders for years and who is breathing in their urticating hairs which are all around in the t-room?

This is off topic but thats intresting, im wondering what the hairs would do to someone who has asthma, iv had asthma for about 16 years since i was 2. I have been in and out of the hospital probably once a year since my parents found out i had it. I have kept T's since i was 11, now would urticating hairs make my asthma worse?? I wonder

 

[Martin H.]

Originally posted by Crotalus

I think thats a allergic reaction (I had that too) - not a anaphylactic chock.

however what's the correct term iit wasn't a nice experience for him: In the last years he got more and more sensitive to the reaction of urticaiting hairs. During cleanings of the tanks he is mumming himself (long trousers, pullover, latex gloves fixed to the pullover with tape,...). This time the reactions have been heavier than ever: his hands got swollen and numb, he got a flicker in front of his eyes, heavy shiverings, an itchiness with weep wheals all over his body,... good luck he had an anti allergycum at home.

Here you can read his experiences (scroll down till the posting of "Micha"): >>click here<<

all the best,
Martin

PS.: It was't a reaction to the latex gloves, because he is using them during his airbrush sessions without problems.

 

[MrDeranged]

Originally posted by Martin H.
however what's the correct term iit wasn't a nice experience for him: In the last years he got more and more sensitive to the reaction of urticaiting hairs. During cleanings of the tanks he is mumming himself (long trousers, pullover, latex gloves fixed to the pullover with tape,...). This time the reactions have been heavier than ever: his hands got swollen and numb, he got a flicker in front of his eyes, heavy shiverings, an itchiness with weep wheals all over his body,... good luck he had an anti allergycum at home.

Didn't this start to happen to Mark Kent as well? Last I remembered hearing, his son was taking care of all the new world stuff because he would break out if he just walked in the room with them....

Scott