Tarantula personality studies?

[dUFF2dUFF]

Out of interest I want to ask if tarantulas act the way they do because of their environment or due to their genes? For example, if the tarantula has been extremely stressed through post delivery, would that encourage more defensive behavior in the future? Or is the stress more of a short term thing and the general personality is due to their genes etc.? I'm just curious to see if there is an answer to this since there seem to be a lot of cases where apparently docile specimens turn out to be quite easily agitated. Are there much (if any) studies like these on tarantulas? I'm just interested in what is going on inside of a T's brain...

 

[EulersK]

Everything I'm about to say is based off of experience, not studies.

Tarantulas undoubtedly have reactive minds and can be conditioned. In their enclosures, they always know where their water is, where their hide is, and so on. I have even seen several YouTube videos of someone 'teaching' their spiders to come out of their hide when he tapped on the glass by feeding them immediately afterwards. In that regard, they can learn, regardless of how primitive the learning may be.

Further, no one will debate that there are drastic differences in reaction between individuals of the same species. Some G. rosea's are very docile, others are extremely aggressive. My last P. murinus never once threw a threat posture, even when he was being rehoused. This may be genetic, although spiders of the same sac can display this polarity. A more likely culprit is hormones. Kittens in the same litter will have different hormone levels, not because of genetics, but because of their position in the womb. Some receive more of a specific hormone than others, resulting in these changes. Now, spiders are neither mammals or share a womb, but the point stands. Subtle hormonal differences in the early stages of life can have drastic differences later on.

For the record, you'll notice that I avoided the word "personality" in this post. That is because tarantulas do not have personality - indeed, no arthropods do. They simply lack the cognitive function for that higher level reasoning. Arthropods do not even have a brain in the same way you or I do. They have a series of nerve clusters called ganglia, which looks like a string of pearls. Each cluster is specialized for a specific task: mating, eating, webbing, and so on.

 

[dUFF2dUFF]

Everything I'm about to say is based off of experience, not studies.

Tarantulas undoubtedly have reactive minds and can be conditioned. In their enclosures, they always know where their water is, where their hide is, and so on. I have even seen several YouTube videos of someone 'teaching' their spiders to come out of their hide when he tapped on the glass by feeding them immediately afterwards. In that regard, they can learn, regardless of how primitive the learning may be.

Further, no one will debate that there are drastic differences in reaction between individuals of the same species. Some G. rosea's are very docile, others are extremely aggressive. My last P. murinus never once threw a threat posture, even when he was being rehoused. This may be genetic, although spiders of the same sac can display this polarity. A more likely culprit is hormones. Kittens in the same litter will have different hormone levels, not because of genetics, but because of their position in the womb. Some receive more of a specific hormone than others, resulting in these changes. Now, spiders are neither mammals or share a womb, but the point stands. Subtle hormonal differences in the early stages of life can have drastic differences later on.

For the record, you'll notice that I avoided the word "personality" in this post. That is because tarantulas do not have personality - indeed, no arthropods do. They simply lack the cognitive function for that higher level reasoning. Arthropods do not even have a brain in the same way you or I do. They have a series of nerve clusters called ganglia, which looks like a string of pearls. Each cluster is specialized for a specific task: mating, eating, webbing, and so on.

Thank you for the reply. I have always wondered if it is possible to condition such a low intelligence species such as T's. I might try it with my one once I get it.

Its interesting to read that spiders have hormones. I always thought their behavior is based on basic instincts. Do you think there is a benefit to the difference in hormone levels in terms of survival? There seems to be hardly any studies on these beautiful creatures, even though they are so fascinating, which is a bit of a shame since there is a lot to learn about them and how they can function.

I do realize that T's lack cognitive functions and with the term personality I rather meant their tendencies to do certain things (such as running from danger instead of attacking it). Do you think that the different structure of the ganglia would result in such tendencies or do you think that it is purely down to their hormone levels at birth? Maybe different hormone levels cause different development of the ganglia? I am aware that you have no studies, I'm just interested in your opinion in terms of their brain structure and differences. I may even consider doing my own studies on animals like these after I get my degree, just because they have always fascinated me. I'm just trying to get some ideas here... Thanks again

 

[mistertim]

I don't think tarantulas are necessarily "low intelligence", its just that their thinking process is so vastly different from ours that its hard to really make any comparison. IIRC, spiders actually have a really high brain to body mass ratio. We really just don't understand at all how they think.

Take Portia fimbriata. A jumping spider capable of coming up with mammalian level hunting strategies on the fly depending on the prey (including ones it has never encountered before) and based on the prey's response to its initial attempts. It learns, it adapts, it will actually devise a path to its prey that takes it out of visual contact with it...which is pretty much unheard of in such "low level" creatures. And nobody can figure out how they do it with the tiny bunches of neurons they have. It shouldn't be able to. But it does.

Here's a super interesting take on it and theory from Peter Watts. He's a great science fiction writer who is also a scientist himself. Warning...he usually does have some NSFW language.

http://rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-bethlehem.html

 

[dUFF2dUFF]

I don't think tarantulas are necessarily "low intelligence", its just that their thinking process is so vastly different from ours that its hard to really make any comparison. IIRC, spiders actually have a really high brain to body mass ratio. We really just don't understand at all how they think.

Take Portia fimbriata. A jumping spider capable of coming up with mammalian level hunting strategies on the fly depending on the prey (including ones it has never encountered before) and based on the prey's response to its initial attempts. It learns, it adapts, it will actually devise a path to its prey that takes it out of visual contact with it...which is pretty much unheard of in such "low level" creatures. And nobody can figure out how they do it with the tiny bunches of neurons they have. It shouldn't be able to. But it does.

Here's a super interesting take on it and theory from Peter Watts. He's a great science fiction writer who is also a scientist himself. Warning...he usually does have some NSFW language.

http://rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-bethlehem.html

This is really interesting stuff. Thanks for sharing! Its interesting to see what a single spider is capable of... No wonder ants and bees have such organized hive/social structures! It almost makes me think that these tiny creatures think exactly like us just with fewer cognitive abilities. Learning more about these creature could maybe teach us more about ourselves? I could read about this kind of stuff all day.. More research will be done!

 

[viper69]

I don't think tarantulas are necessarily "low intelligence", its just that their thinking process is so vastly different from ours that its hard to really make any comparison

This depends upon one's definition of intelligence. To suggest that because one animal's thinking is vastly different, and thus it's hard to make a comparison is not accurate at all.

When your tarantula can solve linear algebra please inform us

 

[viper69]

It almost makes me think that these tiny creatures think exactly like us just with fewer cognitive abilities.

Exactly, no they don't, and "fewer" is an understatement.

More research will be done!

It does, but ~99.9% of the research money for these animals goes to identification and classification.

 

[dUFF2dUFF]

Exactly, no they don't, and "fewer" is an understatement.




It does, but ~99.9% of the research money for these animals goes to identification and classification.

Ok let us call it "different"

 

[EulersK]

I, for one, would certainly make the claim that they are of very low intelligence. I completely understand the argument of "different" intelligence, but those of us who keep both true spiders and tarantulas can clearly see that tarantulas are to true spiders as cavemen are to modern men. True spiders certainly show a sense of awareness and understanding of their prey, for instance. They understand that just because something has stopped moving doesn't mean that it has disappeared. How many times have you seen a tarantula go after a prey item, and the prey manages to play dead long enough that the tarantula actually walks away? To them, object permanence is clearly not a concept. True spiders, however, will actually search out prey, even if said prey is completely motionless. They knew something was there before, so it simply must still be there.

I've had an A. chalcodes close off the entrance to it's burrow with it on the outside, resulting in a hide that it couldn't use. I have a H. incei that has webbed up it's hide so much that it doesn't fit anymore, and can't figure out to simply remove some web. My N. coloratovillosus will walk away from prey playing dead after only one or two minutes. Tarantulas are kind of dumb, even in the realm of arachnid intelligence.

Here's an analogy. If we, as a species, found ape-like life on another planet, then we would certainly call that intelligent life. If we found nothing but arthropods, we would call them complex life. There is a keen difference there.

 

[viper69]

How many times have you seen a tarantula go after a prey item, and the prey manages to play dead long enough that the tarantula actually walks away?

Yeah but we all know that only happens because the Tarantula has discovered the owner has a capacitive touch screen on the owner's cell phone and dials the local Crickets' 2 Go.

 

[dUFF2dUFF]

I, for one, would certainly make the claim that they are of very low intelligence. I completely understand the argument of "different" intelligence, but those of us who keep both true spiders and tarantulas can clearly see that tarantulas are to true spiders as cavemen are to modern men. True spiders certainly show a sense of awareness and understanding of their prey, for instance. They understand that just because something has stopped moving doesn't mean that it has disappeared. How many times have you seen a tarantula go after a prey item, and the prey manages to play dead long enough that the tarantula actually walks away? To them, object permanence is clearly not a concept. True spiders, however, will actually search out prey, even if said prey is completely motionless. They knew something was there before, so it simply must still be there.

I've had an A. chalcodes close off the entrance to it's burrow with it on the outside, resulting in a hide that it couldn't use. I have a H. incei that has webbed up it's hide so much that it doesn't fit anymore, and can't figure out to simply remove some web. My N. coloratovillosus will walk away from prey playing dead after only one or two minutes. Tarantulas are kind of dumb, even in the realm of arachnid intelligence.

Here's an analogy. If we, as a species, found ape-like life on another planet, then we would certainly call that intelligent life. If we found nothing but arthropods, we would call them complex life. There is a keen difference there.

I agree to this, but I feel like it's not their intellect/logic but rather their lack of the cognitive abilities that we have. They can still use what they have to more or less their full capacity. After all they would have died out if they couldn't do that (some have I guess). I guess tarantulas seem to have less intellect because they rely more on their size and strength. But how does something that small still function to such an extraordinary level...

Also I think to compare our intellect to a spider's we would first of all have to understand our own, which we don't...

 

[viper69]

I agree to this, but I feel like it's not their intellect/logic but rather their lack of the cognitive abilities that we have. They can still use what they have to more or less their full capacity. After all they would have died out if they couldn't do that (some have I guess). I guess tarantulas seem to have less intellect because they rely more on their size and strength. But how does something that small still function to such an extraordinary level...

How do bacteria function at an extraordinary level w/out a brain, let alone a single cell. Size has "nothing" to do with it.

You would benefit A LOT from a comparative evolutionary biology class.

 

[dUFF2dUFF]

How do bacteria function at an extraordinary level w/out a brain, let alone a single cell. Size has "nothing" to do with it.

You would benefit A LOT from a comparative evolutionary biology class.

These are the keywords that I'm looking for. I never said I knew anything about these creatures, hence why I asked... I study the human brain and not biology (even though my friend does study biology) and maybe finding the similarities between arachnids' (or insects) and the human's functionality will help us find more answers... And don't make me sound stupid just because I'm asking questions and putting ideas out there... Also if you know so much about the topic, how DO single celled organisms function at such an extraordinary level if you don't mind me asking? As far as I am aware there are only hypotheses that might possibly explain how they do it... Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think any of it has been proven yet. I feel like this whole argument is getting off topic however... All I wanted to know is why some tarantulas of the same specimen behave differently to others... :/

 

[viper69]

These are the keywords that I'm looking for. I never said I knew anything about these creatures, hence why I asked... I study the human brain and not biology (even though my friend does study biology) and maybe finding the similarities between arachnids' (or insects) and the human's functionality will help us find more answers... And don't make me sound stupid just because I'm asking questions and putting ideas out there... Also if you know so much about the topic, how DO single celled organisms function at such an extraordinary level if you don't mind me asking? As far as I am aware there are only hypotheses that might possibly explain how they do it... Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think any of it has been proven yet. I feel like this whole argument is getting off topic however... All I wanted to know is why some tarantulas of the same specimen behave differently to others... :/

First, you aren't stupid for asking questions, nor did I imply that. Don't confuse stupidity with ignorance. They are completely different things. Everyone on the planet is ignorant of A LOT of things; the lack of knowledge in a given area is ignorance, not stupidity.

I read your post and I think if you read or took a class in the area I mentioned it would provide you a greater understanding, how can that be a bad thing?
Second, the study of the human brain, ie neuroscience, is biology, it's certainly not astrophysics , but I know what you meant. Just being funny.

As for variation of behavior, no one knows for sure. However, one could speculate that a tarantula that is less defensive or unaware for example, might ultimately end up becoming another animal's lunch! Thus that Ts genes were poor and/or the predator that ate it had superior genes for hunting that species which will get passed on to its progeny. It's all about survival, nothing more. No different with humans.

Lastly, all life thrives (however it does it) because it evolved/adapted to function in a specific environmental/ecological niche to put it succinctly.

 

[dUFF2dUFF]

First, you aren't stupid for asking questions, nor did I imply that. Don't confuse stupidity with ignorance. They are completely different things. Everyone on the planet is ignorant of A LOT of things; the lack of knowledge in a given area is ignorance, not stupidity.

I read your post and I think if you read or took a class in the area I mentioned it would provide you a greater understanding, how can that be a bad thing?
Second, the study of the human brain, ie neuroscience, is biology, it's certainly not astrophysics , but I know what you meant. Just being funny.

As for variation of behavior, no one knows for sure. However, one could speculate that a tarantula that is less defensive or unaware for example, might ultimately end up becoming another animal's lunch! Thus that Ts genes were poor and/or the predator that ate it had superior genes for hunting that species which will get passed on to its progeny. It's all about survival, nothing more. No different with humans.

Lastly, all life thrives (however it does it) because it evolved/adapted to function in a specific environmental/ecological niche to put it succinctly.

Maybe I should read a book about these things... It all seems rather interesting...

And in terms of psychology/neuroscience, we are very very far from being able to explain how exactly consciousness works, how to measure it and what it even is (in definite terms)... To me its just as deep and complex as astrophysics. Worst thing is we experience it all day, every day and we can't even explain it properly. And yes we can observe the chemicals in the brain but that still doesn't fully explain the concept (at least in my opinion).

Thanks for the answers anyways! I will look into it more in the future!

 

[Yanose]

Instinct is a marvelous thing but it is not creative intellect. If we were all capable of what spiders and other arthropods that build were capable of at birth we could construct a house or a functional piece of machinery but we would understand nothing of the principals that make them function you would not know the numbers you would just know. Impressive but not the kind of understanding that I would call Knowledge of a subject

 

[Poec54]

Tarantulas are kind of dumb, even in the realm of arachnid intelligence.

What they do works, and has been fine-tuned over millions of years. How we judge those behaviors in artificial situations doesn't really matter. They've been on the planet infinitely longer than we have.

Intelligence is relative. As the 'pinnacle of evolution', there's no shortage of Homo sapiens whose intellectual level is an embarrassment to fellow members of the species.

 

[Squidsalad]

I've taken a few classes in animal behavior, and instead of using the word "personalities" we used "behavioral syndromes". Behavioral syndromes are a suite of correlated behaviors across contexts. Animals that are bold tend to explore more, be aggressive feeders and defenders. Shy animals don't get as much food, but usually play on the safe side, so they're less exposed to predators. There's pros and cons to each type of behavioral syndrome. There's tons of scientific papers on behavioral syndromes in arthropods! One of my TAs for evolutionary biology was conducting research in behavioral syndromes at a colony level.

http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2012/01/17/rspb.2011.2376.short
http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-5347(04)00121-1?_returnURL=http://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0169534704001211?showall=true
http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/18/3/556.short
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/02/even-cockroaches-have-personalities

I don't know of any behavioral syndrome studies for tarantulas, but I do think they have their own personalities. It's a combination of genetics,body chemistry, and evolutionary history. This is getting long, but natural selection acts on phenotype (observable traits) , both in colors and in behavior.The environment the founder strain for your specimen of T could have been selecting for a more shy/docile tarantula, versus an environment with limited resources and a lot of competition for resources. Could also be hormone/pheromone related at different stages of a tarantulas life.


I'm honestly considering breeding my A. brocklehursti because she's on the shy side and handles decently well. I'd like to see if it's genetic. Hope that kind of helps!

 

[Squidsalad]

I don't think tarantulas are necessarily "low intelligence", its just that their thinking process is so vastly different from ours that its hard to really make any comparison. IIRC, spiders actually have a really high brain to body mass ratio. We really just don't understand at all how they think.

Take Portia fimbriata. A jumping spider capable of coming up with mammalian level hunting strategies on the fly depending on the prey (including ones it has never encountered before) and based on the prey's response to its initial attempts. It learns, it adapts, it will actually devise a path to its prey that takes it out of visual contact with it...which is pretty much unheard of in such "low level" creatures. And nobody can figure out how they do it with the tiny bunches of neurons they have. It shouldn't be able to. But it does.

Here's a super interesting take on it and theory from Peter Watts. He's a great science fiction writer who is also a scientist himself. Warning...he usually does have some NSFW language.

http://rifters.com/real/2009/01/iterating-towards-bethlehem.html

It makes sense to me that jumping spiders could have a more complex brain than other spiders because they have to be able to process all the visual information coming in. They seem to be more aware and curious than other spiders.

 

[Poec54]

It makes sense to me that jumping spiders could have a more complex brain than other spiders because they have to be able to process all the visual information coming in. They seem to be more aware and curious than other spiders.

And that's why I think arboreal tarantulas are more intelligent. They have to be more alert, and do a certain amount of planning before acting, or they'd be regularly falling out of trees. Their larger AME's mean that they're aware of more going on around them.

I used to have a large collection of cobras for 9 years. They're more intelligent than most snakes; they have to be. When they stand up and spread their hood, they deliberately draw attention to themselves, and are then forced to process and react to a greater amount of information, from all directions. They have to make quick decisions, sometimes life or death. There may be no backing out once they're gone that far and put themselves in the spotlight. When I'd go thru the room and clean/water, some of the upcoming ones would be against the glass, watching me with hoods down. They weren't threatened, just curious. It wasn't a feeding response either, as that was rubbing back and forth across the front glass, usually with their mouths open.