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- Aug 16, 2002
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Has anybody else had a female die sometime after making an eggsac?
Yesterday, I found one of my adult A. seemani females dead. It's been coming for a long time. She had created a sac earlier in the year, and was very skinny. She never fed well afterwards, and for the last few weeks her legs were starting to curl, and her movements were very twitchy, generally signs that the end is near. She never molted after the sac. Interestingly, annother A. seemani in the cage next to her also had a sac at the same time as the one that died. This one, however, has since molted and is feeding normally and looks good. Both were/are long term captives I've had over 5 years (adult when I got them). The only difference between the two was I pulled the sac from the one that lived. I also had an A. avicularia die under almost the identical circumstances.
My theory is that the phsiological strain of producing and caring for an eggsac is sometimes too much for a female to recover from, although I've not heard much talk of this. The A. seemani, a wild caught female, may have been very old and she just never recovered from the stress of eggsac production. The Avic was a fairly young captive born female. In her case, it may have been that she was simply to small and lacked the body mass to survive the whole process. I may have bred her too early.
Any thoughts?
Wade
Yesterday, I found one of my adult A. seemani females dead. It's been coming for a long time. She had created a sac earlier in the year, and was very skinny. She never fed well afterwards, and for the last few weeks her legs were starting to curl, and her movements were very twitchy, generally signs that the end is near. She never molted after the sac. Interestingly, annother A. seemani in the cage next to her also had a sac at the same time as the one that died. This one, however, has since molted and is feeding normally and looks good. Both were/are long term captives I've had over 5 years (adult when I got them). The only difference between the two was I pulled the sac from the one that lived. I also had an A. avicularia die under almost the identical circumstances.
My theory is that the phsiological strain of producing and caring for an eggsac is sometimes too much for a female to recover from, although I've not heard much talk of this. The A. seemani, a wild caught female, may have been very old and she just never recovered from the stress of eggsac production. The Avic was a fairly young captive born female. In her case, it may have been that she was simply to small and lacked the body mass to survive the whole process. I may have bred her too early.
Any thoughts?
Wade
