Thank you for the advice. I will take it.

The horse? He is scared of spiders, I will check and see if he will be willing to come back LOL

Nah, he says he's ok with them, just as long as I don't bring them home... (sounds like my husband) :laugh:

In that case, trade your husband for another horse...

Scarab wrote: In that case, trade your husband for another horse...

:lol:

:lol:

Scarab wrote: ... I believe that when spiderlings hatch in the wild, they do live in close proximity, for a while at least. The "aggression" and/or canabalistic tendencies and/or territorial behavior manifests as they grow. ...

Many, if not most, tarantulas begin to cannibalize each other during the second instar while they're still in the eggsac. This photo was contributed by Ryan (talkenlate04) Nefcy for publication in TKG3. (Many thanks and a tip of the old hat for all your help, Ryan.) It clearly shows four Poecilotheria ornata cannibalizing their siblings. Remember that the Pocilotheria are SUPPOSED to be communal. Without this photo we might have assumed that they would all play nice until sometime long after they emerge from the eggsac, maybe forever. SURPRISE!

Cannibalizing one's siblings while still in the eggsac may have a significant survival value in the long run. Because tarantula growth rates are highly dependent on food intake (that's why "power feeding" works with them), those individual babies that are the cannibals will probably leave the eggsac larger, stronger, faster, or more robust than those that aren't. I'm not sure how much of an advantage that would have in the face of a predator (the larger baby may just be a juicier morsel!), but it would undoubtedly help in competing with siblings for burrow space. And, the more robust baby may be able to dig a protective burrow more readily, or overpower larger prey.

Though I have been berated for my point of view, I have often suggested that tarantula breeders keep the offspring together for a period after they emerge from the eggsac to allow the larger, faster, stronger, non-defective siblings an opportunity to cannibalize their brood mates. This accomplishes several significant things:

1> It reduces the number of babies that the breeder has to contend with. Do you really want to hand feed 2,000+ baby Lasiodora parahybana for the next three years? (Until you can find somebody, anybody!, who is willing to take them as pets.)

2> It removes the slow, small, weak, defective individuals from the gene pool.

"But, I'm not going to breed the defective ones!" How do you know? If you examined each and every one of the 2,000 little darlings under a microscope you might detect many of the defective ones, but for various reasons you undoubtedly would miss a bunch too.

Or, you may quite conscientiously weed out all the undesirable ones from those you kept as breeders, but the other 90% that you sold or gave away are not so well culled. And, you just KNOW that nobody else who got your babies is going to cull them so thoroughly before they breed them. Why would you expect them to? They certainly don't do it with their dogs! Or even among their own species!

3> If you merely destroy and discard the slow, small, weak, defective individuals, you effectively waste the biomass/food that they represent. If you allow them to be cannibalized by their siblings, their biomass is used to the advantage of the survivors, affording them a little better head start.

It is important to separate human predispositions, mind-sets, feelings, beliefs, what have you, from other organisms. The human species has shown the remarkable property of ignoring that basic fact throughout all of recorded history, and probably for a lot longer in prehistory. What's sauce for the goose is NOT always sauce for the gander, and trying to force our standards, predispositions, or perceptions onto other organisms can actually be harmful or deadly to them. Or to us! (Curiously, that may be one of the more important lessons to be leaned from science fiction!)

Anyway, food for thought. Enjoy your little 8-legged survivors.