Tarantulas being bred for size?

[A guy]

Just because it's been done and T's nowadays can be traced back to a single breeding pair does not mean tarantulas are immune to inbreeding defects.

Every living thing on this planet is programed to avoid inbreeding for obvious reasons. Some animals might inbreed if a suitable mate is not found but it's not common. Some tarantulas might resort to it but that does not make them immune to health defects.

Come down to the U.S. when mature males are on the prowl for females. They most certainly do travel great distances to find a female.

If I make the decision to drop $100 or up on a difficult tarantula to find in the U.S. I definitely do not want a sling that was a result from inbreeding.

Alot of sling deaths are not always a mystery that can be attributed to dehydration or parasites. I believe there's two other factors rarely talked about. Breeders saving every sling instead of letting nature take it's course and inbreeding.

Don't get me wrong, I 100% agree that inbreeding should be avoided at all cost when possible. Unfortunately, in a lot of circumstances for rarer species in the hobby ; there is no other choice. It's either between that, let a certain species die out in the hobby like others have already did or get illegally smuggled wild caught specimens

 

[TechnoGeek]

Selective breeding for the best genes and possibly colors if that can even be a thing. I'm not talking about making some wild color tarantula I'm talking like bright bold colors like a said I'm not sure that can even be achieved.

I can understand every bit of that. But for size? And with a species that's already in n a huge mess and even for expert to be able to properly identify. Seems either person has the hook up of all hookups to have this project going on for so long

If you find that you have an exceptionally big T for the species, say a 8 inch brachypelma hamori, then you can look for an unrelated male that's also pretty big, and you can try to breed them. Ofc this won't make the whole captive population of the species bigger, just a portion (not all) of the few dozens or hundreds of slings that you end up with from this breeding will be bigger than avg. This is the best case scenario for breeding bigger Ts that sounds realistic to me.

And this won't be easy btw, you don't know how big a male T will be until it matures, and once mature males only live for 1 to 2.5 years.. and they lose their fertility in the last few weeks of their lives too.

 

[Mike Withrow]

So this has been on my mind all day long. I really wish some of the experts on here would chime in with what they think about this .
So I ended up making a call to my vet and asked him about this and what he thought.
" He is not at all interested in having anything to do with spider's" His view with line breeding is that it does allow for consistency of the type but will limit genetic diversity. And if anything weird is hiding in the whatever is being bred will quickly spread through out the line and if the line in question gets bred to the same breed not in with the line it will spread through the entire breed. I did hear the person in the video mentioning that's why he named them whatever he came up with so as to not introduce them into the original breed.
However and this is just my opinion I'm not a breeder don't claim to be or an actual expert with arachnids. He also mentioned having these available for anyone interested.


Paragraph Mike paragraph............based off what that video shows and the bits of information ive came across,i think that letting one sling out of the line bred ones is irresponsible. Unless he can provide and how would that be possible. Proof that his are void of any crazy mutations.

I'm not trying to bash this person at all I'm just taking a more cautious approach to this.
I don't know them at all for all I know they may have a PhD in etymology.
Letting slings from this out to who knows. You cannot guarantee that someone won't introduce them into the species itself and then welp here we go.
Something else that I've mentioned in this thread. He received what he thought was going to be Hercules" very very doubtful" but instead he got " not really sure maybe gigas"
... That's enough for me.
This is why I wish a actual expert would voice their thoughts and opinions on this. Maybe I'm being overly cautious I dunno.
I also sent an email to a good friend that heads the etymology dept and one of the main universities in my state,but I don't expect to hear back from them until sometime this coming week,I'm sure he will find this interesting. He probably has an account here I just have never asked.

 

[Arachnophobphile]

Don't get me wrong, I 100% agree that inbreeding should be avoided at all cost when possible. Unfortunately, in a lot of circumstances for rarer species in the hobby ; there is no other choice. It's either between that, let a certain species die out in the hobby like others have already did or get illegally smuggled wild caught specimens

I understand what you're saying I wasn't yelling about it so don't take it that way.

I agree inbreeding should be avoided at all cost.

 

[curtisgiganteus]

So this has been on my mind all day long. I really wish some of the experts on here would chime in with what they think about this .
So I ended up making a call to my vet and asked him about this and what he thought.
" He is not at all interested in having anything to do with spider's" His view with line breeding is that it does allow for consistency of the type but will limit genetic diversity. And if anything weird is hiding in the whatever is being bred will quickly spread through out the line and if the line in question gets bred to the same breed not in with the line it will spread through the entire breed. I did hear the person in the video mentioning that's why he named them whatever he came up with so as to not introduce them into the original breed.
However and this is just my opinion I'm not a breeder don't claim to be or an actual expert with arachnids. He also mentioned having these available for anyone interested.


Paragraph Mike paragraph............based off what that video shows and the bits of information ive came across,i think that letting one sling out of the line bred ones is irresponsible. Unless he can provide and how would that be possible. Proof that his are void of any crazy mutations.

I'm not trying to bash this person at all I'm just taking a more cautious approach to this.
I don't know them at all for all I know they may have a PhD in etymology.
Letting slings from this out to who knows. You cannot guarantee that someone won't introduce them into the species itself and then welp here we go.
Something else that I've mentioned in this thread. He received what he thought was going to be Hercules" very very doubtful" but instead he got " not really sure maybe gigas"
... That's enough for me.
This is why I wish a actual expert would voice their thoughts and opinions on this. Maybe I'm being overly cautious I dunno.
I also sent an email to a good friend that heads the etymology dept and one of the main universities in my state,but I don't expect to hear back from them until sometime this coming week,I'm sure he will find this interesting. He probably has an account here I just have never asked.

Do you mean entomology?

 

[Matt Man]

I wasn't fun breeding but my daughter had one of the biggest AF GBBs I have ever seen. We paid her a couple times to no luck. Sadly we found a really large adult male and were hoping to breed supersized slings.
Sadly she passed of old age before we could pair

 

[Mike Withrow]

Do you mean entomology?

Yes sir. I'm sure I butchered the spelling somewhere in my post.

 

[curtisgiganteus]

Yes sir. I'm sure I butchered the spelling somewhere in my post.

No, you had said Etymology which is words and I had a bit much of the devils lettuce

 

[DustyD]

So to just throw a wrench or diversion into all this interesting discussion, what if it were possible to Jurassic Park prehistoric tarantulas using existing species. Should it be done?

 

[Mike Withrow]

So to just throw a wrench or diversion into all this interesting discussion, what if it were possible to Jurassic Park prehistoric tarantulas using existing species. Should it be done?

I've no idea what they did to have whatever in that movie. I don't really watch much tv.

I'm still focusing on line breeding and if this is a common thing. Somehow this has totally blown past me. I've got a couple so far people's thoughts and information on the possible effects.

I'm actually kinda surprised that more of this discussion hasn't been elaborated on here.