Tarantulas Eating Vegetables or Fruit?

Ungoliant

Malleus Aranearum
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Mar 7, 2012
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Tonight, I put a baby carrot in the enclosure of my Brachypelma emilia to lure out the dubia roach that was hiding. After Petra finished with the roach, I looked in the enclosure and noticed that she had the carrot in her mouth.

I was sure she'd drop the carrot once she figured out it was not a bug, but she had it in her mouth for over two hours, and when she was done, the carrot was at least 50% smaller.

She has a full water dish and had already eaten at least one roach, so I am not sure what about the carrot made her want to eat it. It may have smelled like roaches, because I removed it from the roaches' feeding dish. If she touched the carrot and caused it to roll, that may have triggered an initial prey response.

Has anyone else observed this? Any thoughts on what might have prompted my tarantula to feed on a carrot?

I know that experiments have demonstrated that spiders can taste sugar, and some spiders (mostly salticids) have been observed consuming nectar and other plant matter in the wild (in addition to their normal diet of insects).
 

Ellenantula

Arachnoking
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Sep 14, 2014
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You keep raising the bar and your T is going to start demanding apples, then grapes and before you know it, you have an expensive pineapple addict T!

Seriously, I've done the carrot routine to lure a roach out, usually I can catch the roach and then remove a dry shriveled rubbery carrot remnant...
Never had a T take any interest in carrots. :astonished: o_O
 

Chris LXXIX

ArachnoGod
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Dec 25, 2014
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It's because of the climate change. Another thing to consider is that the T's are trying to defend us from the advent of the 'Carrot People' :bored:
 

EtienneN

Arachno-enigma
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Jul 15, 2017
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Maybe she thinks the new feeder is a friend and didn't want to kill it. :rofl::rofl::rofl::angelic: I guess it was investigating the environment and just happened across the carrot and maybe thought it was a lumpy piece of substrate, found out it wasn't and then the feeding response automatically kicked in, because it had no frame of reference to understand (since it doesn't have a true brain) that anything not part of the 'environment' wasn't necessarily food. My A. chalcodes is quite the bulldozer and picks up large chunks of substrate and carries them around. I'd think yours was doing some similar digging and just happened across the carrot by sheer dumb luck.
 

AphonopelmaTX

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Just when you think you know tarantulas, they go and do something like this. o_O Now I'm going to have to go get some fruit and carrots to see if this is repeatable.
 

NYAN

Arachnoking
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Dec 23, 2017
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2,511
Just a comment to add:

Centipedes are known to eat various fruits and vegetables. Perhaps this could carry over to tarantulas. Maybe the sugar or something in the fruits and vegetables is appealing to them.
 

Jim Cricket

Arachnopeon
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Apr 13, 2019
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IDK. If your T is accustomed to roaches that are gut loaded with carrot moisture, could she have possibly mistaken the carrot for a roach? :hungry:
 

chanda

Arachnoking
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Jun 27, 2010
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Oh, for the sake of all that's holy - stop this madness now! If word gets out that tarantulas and other spiders can eat carrots and apples, next thing you know, the militant vegan armies will be after us to make all our inverts into vegetarians!

"How can you possibly be so insensitive and barbaric as to feed live crickets or roaches to your spider?!? Don't you know that bugs have feelings, too? That roach might have had a family! That cricket could have lived a long and fulfilling life! You should be ashamed! You should teach your spider to eat fruits and vegetables and soy-based proteins!"
 

BoyFromLA

Spoon feeder
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Oct 26, 2017
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Oh, for the sake of all that's holy - stop this madness now! If word gets out that tarantulas and other spiders can eat carrots and apples, next thing you know, the militant vegan armies will be after us to make all our inverts into vegetarians!

"How can you possibly be so insensitive and barbaric as to feed live crickets or roaches to your spider?!? Don't you know that bugs have feelings, too? That roach might have had a family! That cricket could have lived a long and fulfilling life! You should be ashamed! You should teach your spider to eat fruits and vegetables and soy-based proteins!"
 

ErinM31

Arachnogoddess
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Feb 25, 2016
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Out of curiosity, I dropped in a small organic grape for two of my T’s — my B. hamorii ignored it while it appears that one of my A. chalcodes did bite it, although the grape was not moved, it was punctured and a bit crushed. I removed the grapes the same evening and gave them to my roaches.
 

Gogyeng

Arachnobaron
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Jun 19, 2019
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311
I regularly add cabbage leaves to my feeders If they are not consumed immediately (last supper thing). My Ts sometimes approach them perhaps for moisture? I've seen one of my caribenals literally sitting inside the leaf and staying there ages.
 
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