Male H. venatoria holding egg sac?!

[Zoeyzen]

I’m just a little confused. I have a bunch of mature Heteropoda venatoria. I’ve raised them all right from the sac, which hatched in July of 2023, so they’re all about 17 months old. Obviously this a sexually diamorphic species, so I’ve known the genders for quite awhile. Haven’t paid much attention to the pedipalps, but I don’t feel like any of my males are missing their dick fingers or anything. I feel like I would have noticed that at some point. I was just feeding and watering, and saw one of my male patterned spiders holding an egg sac. I thought I’d seen a discarded one in his enclosure awhile back, but figured it was something else. Anyway…I’m confused. I can’t get a look at the pedipalps right now, but the triangles on the carapace that the males have are very obvious, and this one clearly has it. This spider has been in this enclosure for months, no chance I mixed up the residents or something. My females lay infertile sacs all the time, I’m very familiar with the look, and I swear that’s what this guy has.
Am I nuts? Is this something else? Do some females have the male patterning?

 

[The Snark]

All females have that patterning. That one is just a little more pronounced. Go by the shape of the abdomen when in doubt. Males are significantly smaller and more wedge shaped. I've seen females a striking yellow blond color,

 

[zsiciarz]

Only if you notice the palpal bulbs (or the epigyne in females), you can be 100% sure about sex. Body shape or patterns may be misleading. Assume she's a female.

 

[Zoeyzen]

Only if you notice the palpal bulbs (or the epigyne in females), you can be 100% sure about sex. Body shape or patterns may be misleading. Assume she's a female.

I’ve just never seen it before. I have 24 females, and they all look exactly the same. None have a discernible pattern. This girl looks exactly like my males. All of my females are pretty uniform in color. I attached a pic of one, but it pretty much represents them all.

 

[Zoeyzen]

All females have that patterning. That one is just a little more pronounced. Go by the shape of the abdomen when in doubt. Males are significantly smaller and more wedge shaped. I've seen females a striking yellow blond color,

That’s interesting, I’ve never seen any variation in mine before. I have 24 females (well, 25 now) and 13 males, and all of my females look exactly alike, and all of my males look exactly alike. This is the only outlier. She’s identical to her brothers. I can’t remember if I took a good look at her palps. It never really occurred to me that it was female, so I probably just didn’t pay attention.

 

[The Snark]

Search online images. The pattern is very common.

 

[Brewser]

"Looks can be deceiving"