Female Arizona blond tarantula. Click image to enlarge.
These common tarantulas are found during the evenings in deserts and mesquite woodlands.
Hungry predators are often deferred by the tarantula’s willingness to brush hairs from their abdomen, causing rashes on skin and pain to eyes, noses and mouths that come into contact with the hairs.
Females move only short distances from their burrows, whereas males actively leave their burrows in search of females. Each time a female tarantula molts, typically once a year, she also molts the lining of her epigynum (the female reproductive structure) where the sperm are stored, so she must mate again before she can produce fertile eggs. Gender determination can be done by examining the exoskeleton.
Male tarantulas mature when they are 10 to 12 years of age. During mating, the male must reach under the female (who may live up to 25 years) to insert his pedipalp into her gonopore to deposit sperm. He is vulnerable to predation by the female when mating. Even in captivity males survive only a few months after mating.
Dorsal view. Click image to enlarge.
Year old Arizona blond. This is one of the offspring of the spider above. Blonds lose the black spot on the end of their abdomen at about two years of age. Click to enlarge image.
[...] whole tarantula “thing” began last July with a captive-bred Arizona blonde tarantula spiderling given to me by the staff of the Sonoran Arthropod Studies Institute during the 2011 Invertebrates [...]