Ally's Eight-Legged Journey

Since we have been playing musical tanks with the critters' enclosures, I thought it would be nice to give an update on Incy Wincy. He's had several months in the time that he's been with me, going from a scraggly little bald-ass spiderling to this lovely juvenile. He is a great spider to watch because - although he does spend a lot of time in his hide - he has stopped bolting away when I come to the enclosure, and he is always excavating his substrate. Like Big Spood, he is a budding architect. In this photo (which unfortunately has no gauge for size comparison) he is about the same size that my P. machala is now - maybe about 2 inches in legspan. His abdomen is bald due to kicking, and he is deperately due a molt: Well, this is him now. If I didn't know any better, I'd swear it wasn't the same tarantula. I haven't measured him, but I'd estimate his leg span to be about 5 inches across, which would make him about half of his adult size - salmon pi...

Incy Wincy is a very shy spider - since going into his larger enclosure I pretty much never see him. He spends the majority of his time hiding under his bark hide, and when he is out and about he will scurry away as soon as he sees any movement. He is the complete opposite personality type to Big Spood. I do try to get photographs - these are usually blurry photos of a spider with the lights off so that I don't disturb him, and I often suspect that there are clearer photos of the Loch Ness moster than there are of my largest spider. But I still try: He's made quite an impressive canyon in his enclosure, having dug right down to the bottom of the plastic. I am sure that he's trying to make a break for freedom, as he likes to pile the excess dirt up at the sides, almost like a step ladder out of his enclosure... Big Spood does the same thing, actually, so maybe they're conspiring to escape...? I've managed to get some photos of him while he's chilling in hi...

It's not often Incy Wincy comes out, so when he did tonight, I snapped a very quick picture of him. It's a bit dark and more than a little fuzzy, but here he is:

Incy has gifted me with a molt! He is strutting his stuff in his brand new clothes - his colouring is getting much darker now, with long peachy hairs, and his adult markings starting to show through. This is his second molt with me, and he is growing fast. Which isn't really a surprise as an adult of his species, Lasiodora parahybana can reach up to 11 inches across. As we have a nice fresh molt, and at a decent size, I thought I might try to sex Incy based on what I learned when sexing Big Spood . When his molt came out of the enclosure, it was completely shrivelled up where his abdomen would have been, so the first thing I had to do was to drop a little bit of water over the shrivelled skin, and gently tease it apart with some delicate tweezers. This left me with this trypophobic nightmare: Fun fact - the odd leaf shaped part in the middle of the cephalothorax is Incy's "sucking stomach". This is a muscular stomach which helps him to suck up his liquid food a...

There are going to be a few of these posts going forward - many of my spoods are either beginning to outgrow their initial containers, or I've decided that they deserve nicer, fancier ones. Incy Wincy finally molted, and just look how fluffy he is!! It's a far cry from his scraggly naked butt. I love it! But now that he has molted, it's time to transfer him to a larger enclosure. As he is similar in size to Big Spood (albeit skinnier!) I decided to get him the same enclosure from Amazon . It was a very basic rehouse - I have started buying substrate and hides in preparation for the number of rehousings that I have coming up, so I was able to give Incy Wincy a lovely piece of cork bark to hide under. It's more important for him to have a hide than Big Spood, as he is a spood that likes to hide rather than be on display. The spider plants are baby plants that have been growing off of the mother plant in my bedroom - I included them and some moss to try and maintai...

When doing the spood check today, I noticed that Incy Wincy was finally showing signs of an impending molt. Since I got him, he has been scraggly looking. His abdomen was pink and bald where he had kicked off all of his hairs, presumably through the stress of being posted - Incy Wincy is a very skittish spider, and runs for cover at the slightest movement so he is very prone to kicking hairs. Once he has molted, his abdomen should be nice and fluffy again. I can't wait to see that. Spiders (and other invertebrates!) molt through a process called Ecdysis, and while most insects will hang upside down to molt, spiders lay on their backs. The external skin or exoskeleton is the top layer of two, and is also known as the cuticle. Underneath the cuticle is a layer of epidermal "skin" cells. When getting ready to molt, glands in the epidermal layer secrete a hormone to separate the two layers. This hormone contains enzymes which - when active - will digest the inner laye...

Wow. I am a very happy spood keeper. I have got home, and transferred all of my spoods into their new homes. Because of sizing, I did not have enough Braplast tubs to rehouse all of the original spoods, so Shelob remains unhoused. But as she is the smallest of the three, she can wait another molt or so. Heterometrus laoticus We might as well start with the biggest surprise. This was a difficult critter to transfer. I was unprepared for a scorpion - I don't keep scorpions at all, and nothing I own has gotten big enough for me to have spare enclosures hanging around or anything, so I had to use what was available to me and borrow an enclosure from work. It's not really suitable - it doesn't have cross ventilation and it's not wide enough - but I have since ordered a glass terrarium from TSS and he will be rehoused again once it arrived. Fortunately, I had enough cork bark and substrate hanging around that I was able to throw a house together, and I can refine it later on....