Why so many males?

[Camberwell]

good day all,

Out of 13 T's we have 1 confirmed female, a couple of slings which i cant tell yet really, and the rest i think are male.

Do T's naturaly produce more males than females??

or do dealers just try to get rid of all their males first??

now i know that no dealer is gonna come on here and say "oh yeah, i usualy try to judge which are males and ship em all out to people buying from my site, then i grow the females on a bit and make a killing", but does this happen??

I'm just trying to determin why i have so many males?, ok a few are still small but their furrows definatly look sealed up tight.

whats your male to female ratio?

cheers

Camberwell

 

[jwasted]

I have 1 confirmed male and 7 for sure females. the rest of mine are slings so I dunno yet.

 

[8 legged freak]

i have 8, 2 are definate female, 1 i have a suspision is male, but not sexed yet, and the rest are all slings which are un-sexed. . . this probably doesn't help . .but still

vincent

 

[Fierce Deity]

I make sure mine are female before I buy them. Therefore, I have pretty much all females.

 

[Code Monkey]

In as much as the eggs themselves are concerned, Ts are aprroximately 50/50.

Whether some dealers do try to sell off males is a routine area of speculation. In theory, it's possible with a low power dissecting scope or decent jeweler's loupe to, within limits, reliably sex many species at a small size - sometimes by the 3rd or 4th instar. However, as has been pointed out, any dealer of reasonable size is generally going to be far too busy with just the feeding, watering, and shipping to be trying to sort and hold back stock to raise for a higher dollar value. Not to mention what would happen to his business if such a practice were ever revealed.

That's not saying it doesn't happen, though. For instance, most of the B. smithi you see showing up petstores are bought as 2-3" juveniles straight from organized breeding operations in Germany. At that size, sexing them is about as difficult as sexing adult humans (at least those not trying to look like another gender) and, in my experience, they seem to be overwhelmingly male. Then again, maybe I've just been unlucky trying to find a female at a petstore, or maybe the females get snatched up quicker by other collectors who check them out and it's the males who hang around for some unsuspecting newbie to buy, who knows exactly?

In the end, it's like flipping a coin, would you expect to flip a coin 10X and see 5H and 5T? For example, I bought 3 slings of P. scrofa and got 1 male and 2 females. I've bought 4 or 5 A. geniculata, all male but 1. All the A. versicolor I got past slinghood were male, but all the B. albopilosum I've raised were female, and so on and so on. It's called variance

 

[ancientscout]

I request females

This may not be of any help but, I always end up paying a bit more but I always get sub-adult sexed females when I purchase. That way I know what I am getting even though dollar wise it is more money than a sling is but additionally I get what I want and, it has an already proven track record to some extent showing that it has X number of molts under her belt which makes me feel better about her chances of survival if i do my part. I also only keep a few species and don't plan on keeping large numbers of tarantulas. I have 5 right now and it is reaching the upper limit that I had set for myself. Thats enough responsiblity for me considering they may be around for the next 10-15 years. Thats along time to have something around. For me anyways.
[side note:] for the folks that have lots of these, it seems it would be a hassle to move them all. Even worse in an emergency. And, what about when all those spiders grow up years from now?..for me I already have the ones I really wanted.

 

[gumby]

when I first started really getting into Ts I asked botar about the likly hood of getting a female and he said one good way to go was to get three slings and then u are almost garenteed a female and I liked that idea because I like to kinda study my Ts out. see how personalities differ in same Ts and I like to watch them grow from a sling to full size.:clap:

 

[TheDarkFinder]

Right now I have about 130 tarantulas. Most I got through dealers online or trade show. Out of the 130 I have sexed about 120 of them. Out of those I have about 110 females. I could not get a male smithi if my life depended on it.
Out of 7 B. smithi, I finally got one male. I had to buy it as a sling with 4 others to get one male.

I guess the lesson to learn is that it is 50/50. I got 3 P. ornatas and two are female. Out of 4 P. fasciata, four females. I always buy X# slings, because you are going to get a female if you do.

As mentioned above, I do not expect dealers looking for sex, unless they want it for themsleves. If they do then it would be alot of time. The second thing is that males have value too. How many times do we see Males needed, wanted males or iso males. I posted a male P. irminia and got a offer in 2 mins for breeding. I paid $15 for the male and could easy get that much if I but it up for sale.

The bottom line here is that you can always sale the males for, at min, what you paid.
thedarkfinder.

 

[tima]

I would generally agree with the others. Most of my Ts are slings (and the subadults/adults I have were bought as the sex they are, whether M or F). Following what darkfinder said, if you really don't like having males, check out what people have posted on the invertsonals -- some may be able to pay good bucks for one of yours (depending on what you've got). I know I have one species that I'd really like to get a male for, and have had no luck. I do, however, have 3 females. If all else fails, you can offer them for sale on the classifieds yourself, and I'm sure people would respond.
Tim

PS: A. seemani wouldn't happen to be one of those males, would it?

 

[stooka]

i have around 50 Ts at the mo with about 10being slings and unsexed and all the rest apart from 2 being females,i seem to have alotta luck in getting females.Having said that i bet my P.metallica is a male:evil:

 

[Varden]

If I don't include the slings I've bred, I've got about 165 Ts. Of these 81 are females, 30 are males, and the rest unsexed. Of my 30 males, 6 are loaners, and 15 were purchased specifically because they were males. I don't think getting more of one sex than the other is deliberate on the breeders' part. I think it's just plain the luck of the draw.

 

[MizM]

...It's called variance

Not in my house... here, it's called "testosterone!"

 

[Camberwell]

Its not that i dont like having males, i quite like my male P.irminia he's a right little acrobat, he swings around upsidedown hanging with 1 leg

I'v mainly bought slings as i like to see them grow and develop, so i knew when i bought them it would be a 50/50 chance and i took that chance, as much as i love T's unfortunatly i didn't want to get 3 or 4 of 1 kind because i just havn't got the room.

basicaly out of 13 T's i would at least expect 3 or 4 females maybe, but as you'v all said it is just the luck of the draw really

my friend has also got around 13 T's and she has got at least 4 females, and i spoke to a guy once who said he had 30 over his time keeping T's and they were all female. and as some of you have said you'v also got alot of females to males, so its interesting to see a wider range of data to get a better picture.

I wonder when a T is created in its egg and molts/grows into a egg with legs and then onto a little baby T, is their sex determined or are there varying factors in their upbringing which affect their sex, like temperatures??

cheers

Camberwell

 

[GoTerps]

In as much as the eggs themselves are concerned, Ts are aprroximately 50/50.

Hey Chip,

You and I see eye-to-eye on a good 95% of things. But here I have to disagree.

Try telling some keepers of Poecilotheria and Cyriopagopus (or other genera in these subfamilies) that the ratio should be 50/50... it seems to be more 75/50 or 70/30 male/female.

The general 50/50 rule may be quite true in a lot of species, even most species... but I doubt it's true across the board.

Eric

 

[Code Monkey]

You and I see eye-to-eye on a good 95% of things. But here I have to disagree.

Try telling some keepers of Poecilotheria and Cyriopagopus (or other genera in these subfamilies) that the ratio should be 50/50... it seems to be more 75/50 or 70/30 male/female.

The general 50/50 rule may be quite true in a lot of species, even most species... but I doubt it's true across the board.

I don't doubt this, but I don't know the mechanism either. In as far as I know, all T gender is determined autosomally just like us. If some genera have odd splits, they either have a different gender determinant or there's a difference in survival post-laying. It's not outside the realm of reason that some Ts would have a different sex determinant, the hymenoptera in insects are positively mind blowing with the variations just that one order has come up with.

 

[Varden]

You know, I wonder if maybe we're looking at this the wrong way. How many breeders, wanting to send out healthy, hearty slings, wait until a sling molts before mailing it out? If males molt quicker than females, perhaps males are getting mailed out in quantity first, and females second because they take a little bit longer? Just wondering...

 

[Code Monkey]

You know, I wonder if maybe we're looking at this the wrong way. How many breeders, wanting to send out healthy, hearty slings, wait until a sling molts before mailing it out? If males molt quicker than females, perhaps males are getting mailed out in quantity first, and females second because they take a little bit longer? Just wondering...

Not a whole lot of them
Yes, if they happen to notice that a given spider appears to be about to moult they will hold back. However, if you're talking about someone with 50+ 2nd or 3rd instar Brachypelma smithi there's simply no way they're keeping track of this sort of thing. Plus, it's not that males moult so much faster than females, they just mature earlier for the most part. As an example, one species' males might be mature by their 12th instar but the females might not be mature until their 16th.

 

[jw73]

I have 23 almost adult or adult Ts. I keep them all from slings. They are different species. Out of 23 Ts I keep there are 18 females.

 

[sparular]

Unlucky?

Although there is plenty of variation when dealing with small numbers in a 50/50 (or 70/30) sex ratio. It is very unlikely to get 12 males and one female. It is possible, but very unlikely. About 0.02% for a 50/50 sex ratio. I don't think that a dealer would do this as you would probably never buy from them again or might just leave the hobby in frustration. I wonder if you've correctly sexed the tarantulas. Have your males all had their maturing molt or are you going by spermatheca or epiandrous fusillae?

Sparular

 

[Psych0]

My first 6 T's were ALL males and the 7th is only female because I bought it sexed for double price.