Little Milo's Feeding Time

[lwood]

When last we left Little Milo, he had just molted. He's a black spider on coconut fiber bedding, so he really doesn't photograph very well--perhaps next molt. Milo has a near-black skin, covered all over in small grey hairs. He can, if very riled, throw these at an attacker to dissuage them.

In this molt his legs are starting to take on the arc I expect to see from a grown tarantula, as opposed to that of other spiders, and Milo is overall much bigger than he had been--with an appetite increase to match. Where before he couldn't be bothered to eat one, perhaps two small crickets per week, he's now happy to eat one each day.

So today, I thought I might try him on larger crickets--"medium" as the Pet Club describes them, as opposed to the "small" we'd had him on before. "Medium" is a a significant size increase: if you don't count the legs, the cricket and Milo have about the same body length.

Twenty Nineteen crickets have been having a feeding frenzy, in shifts, since I brought them home. One was stuck behind in the bag, so I dropped it into Milo's pill bottle.

In his new molt, he would, quicker than a blink, seize upon and slay the Smaller Cricket--but the medium crickets are proving somewhat more sporting.

He seized upon the cricket, bit and paralyzed it--but after a few moments it started twitching again. A second scream-and-leap was enough to pacify it enough for Milo to get to eating.

countgeiger and I wondered if he would eat the cricket entire, as he had been: with the small crickets, he would kill them, and eat the whole thing, which is something you'll not have read about in Charlotte's Web--I was expecting dessicated cricket corpses, but never found any.

But after another few minutes, the cricket began to twitch, despite leaking a milky fluid in one spot and a Milo whose was clearly noshing on a partial cricket.

When the cricket finally crawled away, it was doing so on only five legs.

Milo, on his part, had a cricket drumstick in his palps and was showing down.

I wonder how this will play out through the night?

---

As a sidebar, one simply must ask, "can you overfeed a tarantula?"

After Googlewhacking this a few times, I see two distinct trends:

• Don't worry, you can't overfeed your tarantula, he won't kill if he's not hungry.


• Stupid American! You want all your pets to be obsese like you! Your tarantula is an opportunist who never knows where his next meal is coming from, so will gorge as a bulwark against famine. Of course you can overfeed your tarantula, and it can lead to (variously dire results)!

So, um, there's that...and it's not terribly useful. I'll continue as I have been and will see what happens.

-- Lorrie

Comments

[brigidsblest.livejournal.com]

Eh, I'm an arachniphobe and still found the post interesting. I think the fact that it didn't have any pictures kept me from freaking out too much (although I've been working out on flooding techniques lately).

When I attended Trothmoot in 2008, I went out one night to dump garbage in our garbage can and, when I turned around to go back into our cabin, there was a wolf spider between me and the door. It was bigger than any tarantula I've ever seen in a pet store, as big as the palm of my hand. That triggered me (screaming, hyperventilating, possibly going slightly shocky...I went straight to bed after paranoidly checking the room for more spiders). But this? Not so much. :)

(I still wouldn't want to hold one, though.)

[lwood.livejournal.com]

*grin* I know one Notable Troth Member who wouldn't want to have clicked on the cut--so for that one's sake, I cut because I care.

California has native tarantulas in its hills, even this far north; this is the time of year where the males, having lived in their own burrows, go walking for to court a female. I've never seen the local one, but a local state park has a festival for them every year just the same.

My seidh name, Vefara, means "weaver". This has been one of the inspirations for my interest in both spiders and the textile arts. While tarantulas do not make webs, they can, and do, have spinnerets and can make silk: occasionally there's a small spooge of it in Milo's pen.

-- Lorrie

[jeneration.livejournal.com]

I have to say that I am not an exotic pets specialist (the closest I get to exotic pets is the occasional lizard), but I would go with the second dot point on my understanding - it is possible to overfeed any captive animal. The likelihood of this occurring (and the short and long term sequelae) is subject to individual and species variation, so it may or may not be significant for Milo.

If you really want an accurate answer, check with a zoo curator of arachnids. They tend to be some of the best informed people on captive management of similar species, in my experience.

My 10 cents (seeing as that's the smallest denomination coin here...)

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

I have to wonder how anything with an exoskeleton can get obese. Where would the extra weight go?

[lwood.livejournal.com]

The abdomen is apparently less crunchy/brittle than the other segments, and is where stuff is stored. Er. I'm not sure if it's proper to call it fat when we're so far removed from our home subphylum, but whatever Milo has for storage of excess energy, it's in his ample abdomen.

The variously dire effects never say "his ABDOMEN will EXPLODE zomg!", but suggest that a bloated abdomen may hamper his next molt.

-- Lorrie

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

If it's a lipid, it's reasonable to call it fat. Hell, plants store excess energy as lipids, so they have fat too.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

That's what I'm thinking too--one or two a week seems to be in keeping with all but the most conservative estimates, especially as he is still a wee and growing thing, for his species: when fully grown, his legspan will be wider than an optical disk, but just now his legspan is about that of our of our half-dollars; call it 30mm in civilized measurements. This is approximately 5mm from what it was in his last molt (i.e., it used to be around the size of a US quarter).

...I have no idea what zoos around here even have a curator of arachnids.

-- Lorrie

[desika.livejournal.com]

I remember being very struck by the fact that my tarantulas would eat the whole cricket instead of just sucking them dry. Watching the little pedipalps and mouth parts move was endlessly fascinating.

Reading your posts about Milo is really making me want another tarantula...

[lwood.livejournal.com]

*grin*