Nerdy Science Blog

For some people, tarantulas make them feel creepy due to their larger than normal spiders size, and hairy bodies and legs. But at the same time, they can be exotic babe in most of the people’s eyes, arachnid enthusiasts keep them as pet.

All tarantulas are predaceous, feeding largely on insects. Differ from web-building spiders, tarantulas don’t use web, they ambush, and grab their prey with appendages, and then immediately paralyze their prey by injecting paralyzing venom. But they are toothless, they can’t chew, so they secrete and pump in digestive enzymes to liquefy victims so that they can suck the body contents out in liquid form through their straw-like mouth openings, we call this external digestion. Yummy right? Oppss sorry, is creepy right? Yak…

A tarantula (Aphonopelma chalcodes) feeding, Photograph by Paul Zahl, adopted from National Geographic.

Bigger tarantulas target on bigger game, the prey on small animal such as frogs, toads and mice and even birds! Yup, they attack small animal as well. The goliath birdeater tarantula of South America is the biggest spider in the world, they can grow up to 30 cm long. 30 cm, it is equivalent to a long ruler that we used during our school day. Amazing right?

Perhaps you would like to enjoy this video: “World’s Largest Spider” Stalks South American Jungles, watch yourself how a mice being prey by this birdeater tarantula from National Geographic.

While waiting for video to load using your streamyx line (for Malaysian), are tarantulas dangerous?

Though are creepy, tarantulas, as well as other spiders including famous black widow is harmless to human being like you and me, they are actually allies with human by destroying injurious insects. They are indeed human’s friend. They seldom bite human if we don’t kacau them, and their venom is mild, occasionally fatal. But, their bite, according to sources, is painful.

After watching the video, I was wondering, maybe we can pet a big and yet harmless birdeater tarantula in house when we have uninvited mouse hiding in our house. Or perhaps we can train them as perfect biological deadly-weapon in allies with us in the matter of controlling mouse population, release the tarantula military into SS2’s food street, and attack all the mouse roaming around! I’m sure they do a better job than nowadays-useless-because-too-pampered-cats.

Ok fine, too much crap already. Hope you enjoy this Nerdy Science blog.

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