Unbelievable Appetite

Gail

Arachnopixie
Old Timer
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Aug 16, 2002
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556
I have a curly hair that is about 3" - I got it as a 1/2" sling from Kelly. I'm fairly certain that "Fuzz" is a male from checking the last molt. The strange thing about this guy is his vorocious appetite. He has been this way since he was tiny. He is gentle with me, although a little skittish, but never makes any aggressive moves when I'm cleaning his pet pal or moving him. But his eating habits are almost scary. When I go to feed the T's he must feel the vibrations of me working in the room or see my shadow or something because he presses his palps, front legs and "face" to the plastic and seems to be waiting or watching. He ALWAYS wants something - I swear that he'd eat 20 times a day if I fed him! If I dangle the food with tweezers for too long before dropping it he jumps for it. If I give him a particularly fast roach he chases it about his cage with such gusto that he sounds like a herd of horses stampeding!
Last night something I dread happened - I had a rather large fuzzy/pinky left over that my horned frogs didn't want - it was alive since it was intended for the frogs and I was hardening my heart to throw it into the freezer as I didn't want a repeat of the bleeding heart syndrome I had previously :( My T's won't touch a live pinkie - not even my hugest Chaco. This mouse was bigger than Fuzz's abdomen and ceph put together. I hadn't planned to feed him (I've been trying to cut him back to just a couple of times a week since he is male and I want to try to slow down his maturing a bit) but he was "begging" - now I figured that he wouldn't want anything to do with it and that it might "put him off" begging all the time if I dropped it in for him. Heck, if my big T's won't touch it then you KNOW this little guy is going to be terrified, right. And since it still didn't have teeth yet to bite him I figured it would be no harm, no foul. Well, the little monster walked over, "Stilted" over top of it since it was too big for him to just walk over, seemed to check it out until he found the neck and then BLAM, this little curly grabs this mouse. I was flabbergasted! As of this morning he is just finishing up - there is hardly anything left and his butt is so huge I'm afraid of it bursting. Has anyone else ever had a T with such an appetite? Is this normal for male curly hairs (he is my first male curly hair)? I'm just in awe of him - how I wish he was a girl :D But the good thing is that I have an adult female curly hair who, hopefully, will be just dying to meet him when the time comes.

Gail
 

conipto

ArachnoPrincess
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Sep 27, 2002
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My little 3 inch B. smithi sits all most all day with just her front two legs and palps sticking out of a little cave thing I put in her cage. any time I put anything in there, she darts out, grabs it, and takes it back to the cave. She's gotten so fat I am thinking about putting her on a diet. Also, unlike the rose hair, I can never find a trace of the cricket after she's done eating.

Bill
 

King_Looey

Arachnoprimate
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Jul 19, 2002
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304
My 3" curly ate a box of large locusts, a pinkie mouse and 2 crickets in 4 days. Still think yours is greedy?
 

Alex S.

Arachnolord
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Jul 19, 2002
Messages
645
Voraciousness...

Small Eremobatid solifugids have been known to eat 100 house flies within less than 24 hours!

Alex S.
 
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JacenBeers

Arachnoprince
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Sep 1, 2002
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1,264
My salmon pink is like this as well. I am suer you have all seen the infamous picture I posted of this little tiny spider eating the anole lizard. That anole was under my possession for a week. I tried to feed it to my mature rosehair, my juvenile usumbura, my juvenile pinktoe and none of the showed interest. My mantis that lived in the other half of the cage with the Usumbura noticed and wanted it but that would be way to dangerous. So I put it in with my evil salmon pink and within minutes it had two litle fangs in its brain. Overnight it was nothing but a tail and a stinky mass of rotting black guts that I quickly removed. THe spider is super fat and she still eats anything: ladybugs, moths, crickets, wolfspiders. She is nuts.
 

kosh

Arachnobaron
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Sep 10, 2002
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508
jacen.......i caught a nice sized anole yesterday that had gotten between the window and the screen on the house.......i thought seriously about giving to it my mature male G. rosea but i decided to let the thing go instead.....besides my rosehair just had a pinky last week......
 

JacenBeers

Arachnoprince
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Sep 1, 2002
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I wish we had lizards in the wild up here so that I could catch them and feed them to my spiders all the time. You should do it.
 

kosh

Arachnobaron
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Sep 10, 2002
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well.....i may try feeding an anole to him at a later date.......
we have green and brown anoles here (the one i caught yesterday was brown but when i went to put it down he had started to turn green?? i wonder if they are related to the chameleon??) and i have even seen a few skinks here....i believe the skinks i saw were the 5 lined skink...but im not a reptile expert so im not sure.....it was a very dark color (perhaps black) with some light colored lines down its back (yellow/white i think)....one of them i saw was even a pretty decent size (i guess) i guesstimate that it was over 6 inches long (probably longer including the tail)
 

MVPCrawford

Arachnopeon
Joined
Aug 12, 2002
Messages
24
My 5" B.Vagans is the same way. I feed her 20 crickets/waxworms per week, and nothing has ever lasted more than 2 seconds in her cage. I also have a curly spiderling that always eats mealworms that are bigger than it is. Maybe it is something to do with Brachypelma?
 

JacenBeers

Arachnoprince
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Originally posted by kosh
well.....i may try feeding an anole to him at a later date.......
we have green and brown anoles here (the one i caught yesterday was brown but when i went to put it down he had started to turn green?? i wonder if they are related to the chameleon??) and i have even seen a few skinks here....i believe the skinks i saw were the 5 lined skink...but im not a reptile expert so im not sure.....it was a very dark color (perhaps black) with some light colored lines down its back (yellow/white i think)....one of them i saw was even a pretty decent size (i guess) i guesstimate that it was over 6 inches long (probably longer including the tail)
Actually anoles are sorta chameleon-like. When frightened or stressed they will turn brown. I think it is just to camouflage them or something. The anole that I fed to my spider was green most of the time until it was either be chased by me or by a spider.
 

Rookie

Arachnoknight
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Aug 16, 2002
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283
While on appetites

My friend kept two pet anoles for a while. Apparantly green to brown is their colour-scheme. The two he had were generally green, but they would turn brown if they walked onto a log, or the substrate. It wasn't a mood thing with them, but they were never really in danger. I can't wait to feed an anole to Peso.
While talking about appetite, I just fed a cricket to Peso, and they're of about equal size (see "So it's out...). Is he capable of eating the whole thing? He hasn't eaten for about 8 days.
Paul
 

Tranz

Arachnobaron
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Sep 18, 2002
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320
I've had my G. Pulchra spiderling for almost a month and have yet to find any cricket part. I feed it one small brown cricket every other day, sometimes two days in a row, and sometimes two days off.
 

Rookie

Arachnoknight
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Aug 16, 2002
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Snack

Hey Tranz,
This is the first time I've fed my s'ling since last saturday. He's still chewing on it now; has been for about three hours. I'm not expecting any remains, but I just thought I'd ask. Any picks of that Pulchra?
The Rookie
 

AlbinoDragon829

Arachnobaron
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Sep 29, 2002
Messages
383
Originally posted by MVPCrawford
My 5" B.Vagans is the same way. I feed her 20 crickets/waxworms per week, and nothing has ever lasted more than 2 seconds in her cage. I also have a curly spiderling that always eats mealworms that are bigger than it is. Maybe it is something to do with Brachypelma?
I think it might have something to do with brachypelma, although I've heard that curlyhairs are the greediest of them by far...
 

Wade

Arachnoking
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Joined
Aug 16, 2002
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2,929
Originally posted by kosh
well.....i may try feeding an anole to him at a later date.......
we have green and brown anoles here (the one i caught yesterday was brown but when i went to put it down he had started to turn green?? i wonder if they are related to the chameleon??) and i have even seen a few skinks here....i believe the skinks i saw were the 5 lined skink...but im not a reptile expert so im not sure.....it was a very dark color (perhaps black) with some light colored lines down its back (yellow/white i think)....one of them i saw was even a pretty decent size (i guess) i guesstimate that it was over 6 inches long (probably longer including the tail)
It could be a number of different skinks, but 5-line is as good a guess as any. Theres also one called the "southeastern 5-line skink" (Not the same, but so similar you'd have to be a herpetologist to figure it out). Also, young broadhead skinks look almost exactly like 5-lines, although they eventually turn brown and get alot bigger (up to 12 inches).

Anoles are unrelated to the true cameleons, which are exclusively old-world lizards. Due to their limited color changing abilities (green to brown) they are sometimes sold as "cameleons" or even "American cameleons".

Wade
 

galeogirl

Arachnoprince
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Aug 15, 2002
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I wouldn't catch skinks to use as feeders or to keep as pets. Many native species are becoming endangered because of habitat destruction and predators like cats.
 

kosh

Arachnobaron
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Sep 10, 2002
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508
oh, and i forgot to mention...we have those little green tree frogs here in the wild that people like to keep as pets also......we always get a couple of the frogs outside our kitchen window at nite...we have a flourescent light over the sink that attracts bugs to the window and the frogs come for the buffet:}
 
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