shed skins and U-hairs?

juggalo69

Arachnobaron
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Mar 20, 2005
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I was thinking about taking all mt T's sheds from over the winter to my sons kindergarden class for show and tell along with one or two T's. My question is if I pass the sheds around is there ANY possibility that the urticulating(sp?) hairs on the sheds could cause a reaction in the children?
Also does anyone have a link to a downloadable vid of a molt process that I could take with me and have the kids watch, maybe like a time-lapse vid or a set of sequencial pics so I could show the kids how a T molts.
Also if anyone has any ideas on other things I could do with the kids to make it more interesting for them let me know.

I love being able to do stuff like this, every time I have brought something it makes my kid a schoolwide superstar.
 

ballpython2

Arachnoprince
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Feb 28, 2007
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I was thinking about taking all mt T's sheds from over the winter to my sons kindergarden class for show and tell along with one or two T's. My question is if I pass the sheds around is there ANY possibility that the urticulating(sp?) hairs on the sheds could cause a reaction in the children?
Also does anyone have a link to a downloadable vid of a molt process that I could take with me and have the kids watch, maybe like a time-lapse vid or a set of sequencial pics so I could show the kids how a T molts.
Also if anyone has any ideas on other things I could do with the kids to make it more interesting for them let me know.

I love being able to do stuff like this, every time I have brought something it makes my kid a schoolwide superstar.
if you go on youtube and type it in something like "tarantula molting" you should get a lot of time -lapsed videos"
 

MindUtopia

Arachnoking
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Aug 30, 2005
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Yes, the urticating hairs on the molt will cause the same reaction as on the T, so I wouldn't let the kids touch them. Maybe it would be more helpful to mount them on something so that they can see them without touching. I think it would be great if you have several molts from one T so you can so progression in size from one molt to the next.
 

ballpython2

Arachnoprince
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Yes, the urticating hairs on the molt will cause the same reaction as on the T, so I wouldn't let the kids touch them. Maybe it would be more helpful to mount them on something so that they can see them without touching. I think it would be great if you have several molts from one T so you can so progression in size from one molt to the next.
Do you have any T's that dont possess the uricating hairs?....Like some old world T's molts?...try passing those around.
 

IdahoBiteyThing

Arachnobaron
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Mar 2, 2007
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this is what I did

My niece wanted to take a molt to school (really perfect B. smithi molt, LOTS of hairs), so I went to Michaels and got an acrylic picture frame/shadow box that had a cardboard backing and about 3/4" space to work with. I used my trusty hot glue gun to affix the molt to the cardboard backing, sprayed it with fixative to keep the hairs in place, then put the frame back together with more hot glue so they couldn't take it apart. Worked great, they could look at it really close up, not get haired, and the molt lasted through the process! Hope this helps. Tony

ps. There's also a thread on here somewhere about preserving molts in epoxy resin, it would work great for preserving molts and sending to school. Think you need a 2-part resin and have to do it in layers, but the results are pretty cool.
 

juggalo69

Arachnobaron
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these youtube videos are great but how do I go about transfering them to a form of media that I could take to his school with me?
 

Cirith Ungol

Ministry of Fluffy Bunnies
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Dec 22, 2004
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If you let the kids handle any u-hair free moults... expect them to be in pieces in no time ;)

You could check the T vid section in the pic forum for any files that are downloadable. That section was started before sites like youtube became popular so many of the older links will still have downloadable videos.
 

juggalo69

Arachnobaron
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Mar 20, 2005
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If you let the kids handle any u-hair free moults... expect them to be in pieces in no time ;) .
Thanks for the thought but the only reason I kept the molts at all was for this purpose, usually they just go to the circular file.

You could check the T vid section in the pic forum for any files that are downloadable. That section was started before sites like youtube became popular so many of the older links will still have downloadable videos.
Thanks, for some reason I didn't think of that myself. I'm still not sure that after I got it on my hard drive it would be any more useful to me, I could put it on a data cd but I'm not totally sure how new the computers in my kids kindergarden class are or if they would even have software that could play said media
 

IdahoBiteyThing

Arachnobaron
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re: Youtube

You might just contact the poster of the video you like, they'd probably email it to you and you could take it to class either on your own laptop or on a disk. I've found most folks to be really free with info sharing, especially if it's for the children! TF
 

cacoseraph

ArachnoGod
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Jan 5, 2005
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you can also look through your cache for all the flv files to get offline replayable content from youtube. i can't always find videos, but sometimes it works

you would need to download the flvplayer to play them, though. it's free
 

Cirith Ungol

Ministry of Fluffy Bunnies
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Thanks, for some reason I didn't think of that myself. I'm still not sure that after I got it on my hard drive it would be any more useful to me, I could put it on a data cd but I'm not totally sure how new the computers in my kids kindergarden class are or if they would even have software that could play said media
If they are mpg files you can burn them in VCD or SVCD format, which allows you to even play them in a DVD player.
 
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