My A. Versicolor

[2oCHEVYo0]

For the past couple weeks my 3/4"-1" versicolor has been in "premolt" or at least should be. It is SOOOO dark in coloration, pretty much black and doesn't really have all that much blue left. Walks around drunk and slow and has a VERY large web for its size anyways. I went to just try and feed it the other day just to make sure it wasn't hungry and was very suprised at its reaction.

It didn't eat it, but it threw up a threat pose and started smacking the web with fangs stickin out! Then it kinda started pushing down on the web and stuff to try and intimidate the little cricket. The cricket got off of the web and was down in the bottom of the container where it was out of reach so I decided to leave it in there. I came in the next day to see the cricket laying upside down on the substrate dead, so I'm thinking my Versi went down there and ended its life sometime last night.

Just thought it was interesting as I'd never heard of this before, so I wanted to share it with all of you

 

[Arthropod]

Yeah don't mess with a T about to molt, he'll kill you just because hes grumpy

 

[LirvA]

It's a bad idea to try to feed them during this time, no?

 

[curiousme]

Once we failed to realize our P. regalis spiderling was in premolt and threw a roach in there for her. She had much the same behavior, but also built it into the middle of a dirt curtain to keep it as far away as possible from its molting spot. At first she just webbed it and hung it from the fake plant and then gradually brought mouthfuls of substrate up to conceal and entomb it. It was a pretty cool thing to watch.

 

[2oCHEVYo0]

That's pretty cool! Never once have I heard of a spider building a live insect into there web curtains. Would have been pretty cool to watch.

 

[dannyboypede]

When my Nhandu chromatus started to get a dark abdomen I figured it was in pre-molt. After about a week of it doing nothing, I decided to try and feed it. It had been eating every-other-day for two weeks, so I could try to get it to stop wandering. Yesterday I tried to feed it. It ran into it's hide, and when I had the cricket in the tongs by the spider in its hide, it threw up a threat display. It was hilarious. This spider spent 2 minutes in its hide, reared-up showing its fangs. I guess its not hungry.

--Dan