The trouble with males (some advice on buying tarantulas)

Guy Tansley

A few years ago, any arachnologist could have told you that the male tarantula was a somewhat elusive creature. There were a select number 'doing the rounds' and finding a matured male for your prize female was difficult, to say the least. These days, however, we are seeing a reversal of these circumstances. One would expect approximately a 50/50 share of males in any collection of reasonable size but recently I seem to have had more than my fair share.

I put this down to the increasing number of entomological shows which are appearing across the country. A sense of excitement fills the atmosphere when you enter one of these large shows and there is nothing more tantalising than to come across a table bearing large specimens of a relatively new species to the hobby. It is here where the danger lies.

On inspection of the various sized tubs (and the excess money in your pocket), you seem to lose all powers of common sense and gleefully part with your hard earned on a particularly large juvenile. But, as the months of tender loving care pass, you are increasingly concerned with the spiders moulting rate and it's apparently small size. Yes, you've guessed it! It's a male!

Now the fun really starts! What do you do? Do you frantically telephone round your friends, desperately trying to find a suitable mate or do you spend even more money on an elusive mature female, opting to try a pairing yourself? Chances are that it's both. But what soon becomes apparent is that everyone who has a female is unwilling to part with her and those same few people have "all the males they need".

So remember when you visit one of these shows (there's practically one a week these days!) and are told by the table holder, "Sorry mate, I haven't had time to sex them." - steer clear. More often than not the tubs are full of immature males imported or bred by the trader and sexed as soon as it is possible. The males are sold and when they've matured, guess who has most of the females in the country? The certain trader who will either sell you one of his females at a high price or willingly accept your male for breeding after you've paid him for the privilege of raising it for him!

My advice when it comes to buying at shows is to resist temptation (hard, I know) and either only buy from a reputable dealer (John and Kathleen Hancock guarantee the sex of their spiders) or simply buy a handful of spiderlings of the species at a lower price. This way you will probably end up with at least one male but do try to but unrelated spiderling stock to prevent sibling breeding (easy with more common species). It should be remembered, though, that spiders can be successfully sexed as young as four months so the younger the better.

I'm sure many people (myself included) would be grateful if traders would come clean and label their stock as immature male or female, many people would buy one or the other depending on their needs. Plenty of people want immature males for breeding and with a 50/50 ratio out there, I'm sure sales of pre-determined sex spiders would be beneficial. What we're ending up with is a group of amateur arachnologists who are forced into the breeding game when they are either not ready to do so or simply don't want to. There are people with large collections who simply don't want to breed their spiders and their views should be respected.

This brings me to the next problem. Small males. Increasingly we are seeing an unusual number of small or undersized males maturing and my concern arose when I tried a pairing with my large female Lasiodora parahybana. The female is around five years old now and is by no means a small spider but on this occasion (the second breeding attempt) I was unsuccessful due to a small male. Many attempts were made to pair these willing spiders but the male was simply too small and not nearly strong enough to lift the large female into the correct position. Try as hard as he may he couldn't reach the females epigynum with his palps and this eventually resulted in him losing his front tarsus due to it being bent backwards and literally snapped off altogether this didn't render him useless to smaller females, there was no way he was going to be able to mate with my female.

In their natural environment small individuals would probably not survive but in the safe predator-free habitat of captivity, nearly all of the spiders reach maturity. Spiders are gorged on a never-ending supply of food and therefore longevity is speeded up and males mature much faster than normal. Are these small males the result of excessive in breeding of a particular species and should these under-sized males be used for breeding if, as I've mentioned, they cannot even mate in the first place? Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that we should only breed from the largest and healthiest spiders but there has to be a line drawn somewhere to avoid producing poor stock. After all, with more and more countries banning the export of native wildlife, these spiders may be our only hope of maintaining the species in captivity.

This article first appeared in the Journal of the British Tarantula Society, 12 (3): 79-80 (1996).