Tarantula's and spider's hygiene

[Eli02]

My brother has been going around talking about how spiders and tarantulas (like mine) are the dirtiest "bugs" on earth because they never clean themselves. I don't think this is true because I'm pretty sure I've seen several of my tarantulas clean themselves. However i can't seem to find much on it research wise and was wondering about your guy's thoughts on the matter were.

 

[Chris LXXIX]

Actually is the opposite now if someone views those as "dirty bugs" (not literally, I mean) per se, it's normal... how many times we have heard something like that?

But really they don't smell, they took what remains of their "food" in a corner, in/near the water dish... on my book, among animals, T's are by far one of the easy maintenance, zero noise, more clean animals ever :-s

 

[Rob1985]

I pulled this from Quora which was an answer the question of why insects and spiders groom themselves.

"Interestingly, in at least some species, the frequency of grooming is independent of the cleanliness of the environment. The insect doesn't necessarily groom itself because it feels dirty. It grooms "just in case".

Insect grooming behavior serves a wide range of purposes, including:

• Removing pathogens and parasites, and debris that could serve as a breeding-ground for pathogens
• Redistributing surface chemicals such as antimicrobial chemicals
• Cleaning olfactory sensory pores on antennae [1]
• Preventing respiratory spiracles becoming clogged
• Possibly most importantly, removing debris from sensory hairs, which are critical for all insects to sense surrounding objects, their own location and even the relative position of their body parts. For example, some insects, such as praying mantises, sense the location of their head using sensory input from long bristles on their shoulders. This seems odd to us as we have well integrated proprioception (sense of where our body parts are relative to one another) but is important for insects.[2]

 

[Ungoliant]

However i can't seem to find much on it research wise and was wondering about your guy's thoughts on the matter were.

Tarantulas (and other spiders) definitely groom themselves on a regular basis.

Avicularia avicularia

Hogna lenta (wolf spider)

 

[The Grym Reaper]

As animals go, they're probably some of the cleanest, I constantly catch mine grooming themselves and they almost always have a designated corner for poop/boli, I'm sure that even those arboreals that do horrible things to water dishes only do so because standing water in the trees would be "flushed away" with subsequent rainfall (no rainfall in an enclosure so we get to do the honours).