What causes death?

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Arachnolord
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I was asked today, by a coworker, what is it that kills a T when it dies? I thought it was a stupid question, but then he clarified for me. What is it that shuts down in a T to kill it when it dies of natural causes? Heart? Liver? I found that I couldn't answer the question. I don't know enough about T anatomy to know what it is that kills the spider when it dies. I know the circumstances are all different, but I was wondering what is the most common failure that causes death in spiders. I'm just looking for generalities, not specifics.
 

MizM

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I was asked today, by a coworker, what is it that kills a T when it dies? I thought it was a stupid question, but then he clarified for me. What is it that shuts down in a T to kill it when it dies of natural causes? Heart? Liver? I found that I couldn't answer the question. I don't know enough about T anatomy to know what it is that kills the spider when it dies. I know the circumstances are all different, but I was wondering what is the most common failure that causes death in spiders. I'm just looking for generalities, not specifics.
I don't think anyone in the hobby has done enough research to determine the average cause of death. There could be any number of factors that we haven't even discovered yet. At Arachnoboards, we call it "UADS" or "Up And Die Syndrome".:eek:
 

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Arachnolord
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Interesting. I wonder what it could be. I would think that if any one system fails, they would all fail but of course I wonder which one goes first. Maybe the body just slows the circulation of hemolymph until the oxygen level drops to a lethal level. Merely speculation of course, I really don't know much at all about T physiology.
 

Drachenjager

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I was asked today, by a coworker, what is it that kills a T when it dies? I thought it was a stupid question, but then he clarified for me. What is it that shuts down in a T to kill it when it dies of natural causes? Heart? Liver? I found that I couldn't answer the question. I don't know enough about T anatomy to know what it is that kills the spider when it dies. I know the circumstances are all different, but I was wondering what is the most common failure that causes death in spiders. I'm just looking for generalities, not specifics.
What causes death? I am 100% sure its failure to live.
 

Drachenjager

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I don't think anyone in the hobby has done enough research to determine the average cause of death. There could be any number of factors that we haven't even discovered yet. At Arachnoboards, we call it "UADS" or "Up And Die Syndrome".:eek:
i think that the average cause of death in mature males is being eaten... or run over by cars...
captive Ts cause of death is prob husbandry issues first and formost. Not to mention CB slings are going to have less competition from siblings and have an artificially high survival rate, thus weaker spiders surviving to reproduce...
Then you get lots of UADS . Where if we left the slings to compete some would be eaten , some just die then be eaten and the survivors will be stronger ...
 

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Arachnolord
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I understand the artificial causes of death (being killed by some outside force), I was just wondering what is the internal process that causes death by natural causes. Where does the spider begin shutting down in other words.
 

Aurelia

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I think it's probably the heart that stops. I think they have a sort of heart muscle just like us.
 

Merfolk

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Females don't age, realy... but if they become too big they will have a harder time processing oxygen thru book lungs. They become sick, get trapped in a molt, waeken from giving birth, etc. But when no problem occurs, they last.

The case of mature males is a bit harder to understand. The get stuck in the molt if they aptemt another one, they loose their apetite and go thin and weak.

Finaly some of them seem to simply shutdown and it seem that their vital function degrade for some reason, perhaps its programmed in some way ; many here have tryied to explain but it is still a mystery!
 

ricneto

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MUltisystemic organ failure ;)
Seriously it is more likely to be a group of things Heart does not work properly. Muscles too exhausted. Book ung not as eficient.
But just guessing. It is easier if to find the cause of death if you suspect she died because a foot made a large pressure on her;)
 

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Arachnolord
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Good answers. Thanks. I never really thought about it and he asked, but now I can give him a list of reasons. It's kinda what I thought but I wanted to make sure before I said anything. Thanks again for the great answers.
 

DrAce

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It's actually not a very 'good' question, in that it lacks the simple answer you were looking for, and the right answer is not known, but really complicated.

Lets look at people. What knocks off people? Why do we die?

Well there's failure of any organ you would like to name... running from brain, perepheral nervous system, heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, the other kidney, ovaries, pancreas, immune etc.

The modern health systems normally mop up a few of those if they are caught - e.g. ovaries can cause some severe hormonal things to go wrong... removing them can make things better if it's caught on time.

Then there's 'abnormal organs' - cancer basically. That'll do you in fairly quickly if it's not caught. Then there's accidents. Then there's infection.

If you wanted these put into order, the statistics are all out there. Don't ask me to look them all up, because I can't be bothered. I know Cardiovascular Disease (stroke, myocardial infarction, deep vein thrombosis, etc) is number one, followed by cancer (general).

In terms of spiders, similar things can and do go wrong. I don't know of cancerous growths, but I can find no good reason why they should be immune. We know they can get infections, we know that they can have nervous problems. It stands to reason that while we don't know about their rates of CVD, I'm sure they are possible.
 
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