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This
absolutely beautiful spider is Ruby, a MEXICAN
RED KNEE TARANTULA. This is the species of
tarantula which most people are familiar with
from pictures or on television/films, as it is one of the
most popular species of all due to its colouration.
I acquired Ruby in September 2007 when she was still
a juvenile and she has grown a lot since then and
become very attractive indeed. She is very
calm and friendly too as anyone who has met her will
know!

It is very unfortunate that
tarantulas have such a bad reputation for being
nasty and dangerous creatures as it just is not
true. Despite being venomous they are really
not dangerous to people at all and rarely if ever
bite people, despite films often showing them doing
this. If a person is bitten by a tarantula the
effect is usually no worse than a bee sting as their venom
is very weak, so they are not at all the deadly
creatures that many people believe them to be.

Tarantulas are actually
generally shy and secretive animals and many spend
their days hiding under logs etc. or even
underground in burrows they create for themselves,
but thankfully Ruby here likes to be on display in
her enclosure at all times! In the wild
Mexican red knee tarantulas spend a lot of time in
their deep burrows where they hide from predators
such as the coati.

To date Ruby has
moulted five times since I bought her in September 2007,
the moulting process being one of the most
fascinating things about tarantulas as they
completely renew the whole of their outer body or exoskeleton whilst somehow leaving their old
exoskeleton in one piece! The picture below
shows the scene which greeted me on the morning
after her most recent moult at the end of March
2010:

It is
always a remarkable and unusual sight as it looks like there are
two tarantulas, but the one on the right of the
picture is nothing more than the empty outer body
(exoskeleton) which
the real Ruby (on the left) has squeezed
herself out of! The empty exoskeleton is
less colourful, or at least more brownish in colour,
as Ruby has renewed all of her black and red/orange
hairs during the moulting process!
The
pictures below show her moulted exoskeleton, looking remarkably like
her but being nothing more than an empty case or
skin, which is correctly called an exuvium.
I have very carefully positioned it in a plastic tub
so as not to break it as it is very brittle and easy
to damage. The left hand picture shows the
exuvium with the carapace (head) in place, whereas
on the right it has been 'flipped back' to reveal
the inside:

It is through the openings
in the central part of the body (underneath the
carapace) that the tarantula has to pull all of its
new legs and fangs, a truly remarkable achievement.
You can see these openings more clearly in the two
pictures below, with carapace intact first and then
removed in the second picture!


Each opening leads into a
hollow tunnel and the new legs and fangs are pulled
out of these during the long process of moulting,
which can take several hours to complete. I
have always said that this is one of the most
remarkable sights in the natural world and I stand
by that claim again today, it is a sight I never
tire of seeing!
The two pictures of Ruby's
head area below clearly show the difference in
colouration she is showing following her recent
moult. The first picture was taken in April
2010, three weeks after her most recent moult, and
the one below in July 2008. Both the greater
depth of the blacks and higher intensity of
red/orange colouration in the top picture are very
clear to see, and although I've always thought of
her as being attractive I think she is absolutely
stunning now due to the much higher contrast between
these colours!


If you look at the picture
above very closely you can also see six of
her eight eyes! The eight eyes of a tarantula
are arranged in a cluster around a small mound at
the front of the 'head', or carapace as it is
correctly named, but despite having so many eyes
they do not see very well at all. Instead they
rely on the very sensitive hairs on their legs to detect
movement and change in their environment, and they
even have highly specialised leg hairs which can
'taste' the air!
The simple truth is that
tarantulas are
fascinating to watch grow and also very beautiful animals to
look at and admire, which I hope you can see is
definitely the case for the lovely Ruby!


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