West Texas tarantulas?

[Case]

Hey all. I was talking on the phone the other day to my mom, who lives in San Angelo, Texas. She mentioned that fairly regularly, tarantulas get into the place where she works, and(sadly) the staff usually kills them. I told her, of course, that the spiders are undoubtedly more scared of people than the people are of them, and asked her to encourage her co-workers to shoo them out rather than kill them.

What species is/are found in that area? Aphonopelma anax? I was thinking that I might look around next time I visit out there, and if it looks like there are a lot of them around, maybe adopting one or two of them. But of course I would want to make sure I wouldn't be doing any harm by doing so.

Has anyone done any collecting or looking around in that area? It is primarily rocky and flat with a lot of mesquite trees and scrub brush. It's not way out in the extreme West Texas Big Bend area - I think it's about 3 hours northwest of San Antonio.

Scott

 

[krucz36]

that sounds like a blast...great place to try the method i saw on (what else) the discovery channel...
go out and find some likely holes in the day, and flag them for later. after dark, head out and plant a lantern next to the hole. wait for the inevitable moths and other flying night beasts to start banging off of it, and see if a T pops out.

from what i've read there's a lot of texas species. i've got an A. texense. i found this while looking for texas tarantulas. it's an interesting article from more of a non-hobbyist perspective.

just looking through some sites, there's tons of references to a multitude of species...many not likely to ever be popular in the hobby...one site mentioned 30 variations of Arizona Blond...
American tarantulas are a very poorly studied animal, i guess.

 

[zoobugs]

Hi Case,
I've done quit a bit of hunting in the west Texas area, both for herps and inverts, and as of right now, the Aphonopelmas from that area are problematical at best. I believe your anax occurs further south in Texas, say, around the Corpus Christi area. Tarantulas occurring near San Angelo/Del Rio/Sanderson areas are probably A. hentzi. Again, I could be wrong, but the American Tarantula Society sells a book about tarantulas from Texas and it gives fairly good accounts of T's county-by-county.
Best.
Jim