Due to their appearance and an unfair fame, tarantulas are today one of the most rejected, feared and sacrificed animals; However, in reality they are defenseless and shy little beings that have inhabited the earth since the Carboniferous period of the Paleozoic era, approximately 265 million years ago.
The staff of the Unam Acarology Laboratory has been able to verify that there is no medical record, since the beginning of the last century, that records the death of a person by tarantula bite or that links an animal of this type with some fatal accident. The habits of tarantulas are mainly nocturnal, that is, they go out at night to hunt their prey, which can be from medium-sized insects, such as crickets, beetles and worms, or even small rodents and even tiny chicks that they capture directly from the nests. Hence, one of the common names given to them is “chicken spider”.
Tarantulas are solitary animals that spend most of the day hidden, only during the mating season it is possible to find a male wandering during the day in search of a female, which can be kept sheltered in a hole, bark or hole of a tree, or even between the leaves of a large plant. The male has a life span, as an adult, of approximately one and a half years, but the female can reach up to twenty years of age and takes between eight and twelve years to mature sexually. This may be one of the main reasons that make us think twice before giving the classic shoe to a tarantula, since in a few seconds we could end up with a creature that took many years to be in a position to preserve its species.
Mating consists of a fierce fight between the couple, in which the male must keep the female at a sufficiently far distance by means of structures on its front legs, called tibial hooks, so that it does not eat it, and at the same time to have within reach is her genital opening, called the epiginium, which is located in the lower part of her body, in the huge, hairy rear ball, or opistosoma. There the male will deposit the sperm using the tip of his pedipalps where his sexual organ called the bulb is. Once the sperm has been deposited in the female's body, it will remain stored until the following summer, when it comes out of hibernation and looks for a suitable place to begin to weave the ovisco where it will deposit the eggs.
The life cycle begins when the female lays the ovisac, from which 600 to 1000 eggs will hatch, only about 60% surviving. They go through three stages of growth, nymph, pre-adult or juvenile, and adult. When they are nymphs they shed all of their skin up to twice a year, and as adults only once a year. Males normally die before moulting as adults. The skin they leave behind is called exuvia and it is so complete and in such good condition that arachnologists (entomologists) use them to identify the species that changed it.All giant, hairy and heavy spiders are grouped in the family Theraphosidae , and in Mexico live a total of 111 species of tarantulas, of which the most abundant are those of the genus aphonopelma and brachypelma. They are distributed throughout the Mexican Republic, being significantly more abundant in tropical and desert regions.
It is important to note that all spiders belonging to the genus brachypelma are considered in danger of extinction, and perhaps this is due to the fact that they are the most striking in appearance due to their contrasting colors, which makes them preferred as "pets". besides that its presence in the field is more easily noticed by its predators, such as weasels, birds, rodents and especially the wasp Pepsis sp. which lays its eggs in the body of the tarantula, or the ants, which are a real threat to the eggs or the newborn tarantulas. The defense systems of these arachnids are few; perhaps the most effective is its bite, which due to the size of the fangs must be quite painful; It is followed by the hairs that cover the upper part of the abdomen and that have stinging properties: when cornered, tarantulas throw them at their attackers with rapid and repeated rubbing, in addition to using them to cover the walls of the entrance to their burrow, with obvious defensive reasons; and lastly, there are the threatening postures they adopt, raising the front of their body to reveal their pedipalps and chelicerae.
Although they have eight eyes, arranged differently depending on the species in question –but all in the upper part of the thorax–, they are practically blind, they respond rather to small vibrations of the ground to capture their food, and with the body totally covered with hairy tissue can feel the slightest draft of air, and thus compensate for their almost non-existent vision. Like almost all spiders, they also weave webs, but not for hunting purposes but for reproductive purposes, since it is where the male first secretes the sperm and then, by capillarity, introduces it into the bulb, and the female makes its ovisaco with cobweb. Both cover their entire burrow with cobwebs to make it more comfortable.
The word "tarantula" comes from Taranto, Italy, where the spider Lycosa tarentula is native, a small arachnid with a fatal reputation throughout Europe during the 14th to 17th centuries. When the Spanish conquerors arrived in America and encountered these huge, terrifying-looking critters, they immediately related them to the original Italian tarantula, thus giving them their name that now identifies them all over the world. As predators and predators, tarantulas have a predominant place in the balance of their ecosystem, since they effectively regulate the populations of animals that can become pests, and they themselves are food for other species that are also essential for life to take its course. Therefore, we must raise awareness about these animals and bear in mind that "they are not pets", and that the damage we do to the environment is great and perhaps irreparable when we kill them or remove them from their natural habitat. In some cities in the United States a practical use has been found for them, consisting in letting them roam freely in houses to keep cockroaches at bay, which for tarantulas are a veritable bocato di cardinali.
