This beautiful spider is a large juvenile BRAZILIAN BLACK TARANTULA. As adults, individuals of this species are a velvety jet black colour over the entire 12 - 15cm body and they are truly very beautiful to behold. This individual is not yet fully grown and is still developing the beautiful deep black colouration but these most recent pictures (taken in April 2012) show that she is looking gorgeous anyway!

Back when I purchased her in July 2011 she didn't look anywhere near as black or as beautiful as she does now, as well as being a whole lot smaller as the pictures below demonstrate!

Soon after acquiring her as a very small juvenile in the summer of 2011 I ran a competition both on my website and in the local press to find a suitable name for her.  The name I picked was Midnight, which based on her colour at the time (below) may not have seemed like a particularly suitable name but it certainly is now!  My thanks to Emma Gibbons and the rest of the staff and children of Westlea Primary School's breakfast and after-school club for this brilliant suggestion!

I should point out here that I am saying 'her' and 'she' more in hope than anything else as there is no guaranteed way at this stage to tell if 'she' is in fact a female or not.  This only becomes apparent much later in a tarantula's development as anyone who followed the story of my beautiful Smartie the Antilles pink toe tarantula will know!  I am hoping that she will prove to be female simply because females live a lot longer than males!

Like all tarantulas Midnight has to moult her exoskeleton regularly during her development and in early October 2011, when she moulted for the first time since I had bought her, I was fortunate enough to catch her in the act!  Here is the scene which greeted me:

As you can see I caught Midnight just at the end of the moulting process whilst she was lying on her back resting.  At this stage the body is very soft and vulnerable to damage so it must not be touched or disturbed any more than is necessary at this time.  Within a couple of hours she had turned over and was stood in a resting position which just happened to be over the top of the old exoskeleton (exuvia):

At about 36 hours post-moult the body colour had darkened up quite significantly:

The moulted exoskeletons (exuviae) of tarantulas continue to amaze me no matter how many times I see them!  Here is the one moulted on this occasion, looking quite like the real Midnight!

This is the scene which greeted me following her most recent moult in early April 2012, once again you can clearly see how her colouration has changed significantly in the six months between these moults!