In my collection of Tarantulas I have 3 classes: Sweet, questionable and mean. The sweet Tarantulas, as one might expect, are docile and can be handled without fear (although I must caution anyone reading this that ANY wild animal should be treated as such, with caution). I have several "sweet" Tarantulas that I don't fear handling, although I admit they do make my heart race a bit whenever I take them out.
The "questionable" Tarantulas are those that are not mean spirited, or super defensive, but that are naturally a bit quick to bite first and ask questions later. Not in a defensive manner, but in a more "hungry" manner, if you catch my drift. These are spiders that you worry that they might mistake you for fodder, not for a foe. I have a couple of these and I am sorely tempted to handle them but I have not yet done so.
Finally there are the "mean" Tarantulas. These are Tarantulas that always seem to be on the defensive or, in the case of at least one of my two most aggressive Tarantulas, on the "offensive." These are spiders that when you intrude on their space, turn right at you and lunge. They might give you a warning, but one is all you get. My Sun Tiger is pretty defensive. She will lay back, stick her forearms waayyyyy up and act like she will eat you alive... but that is usually the extent of it. My Grand Canyon Black on the other hand has no stops. Just today as I was mucking in her cage she came OVER to the tool I was using, raised her forearms, her abdomen, then without much more warning than that struck it, fangs out. Made a nice clacking sound on the wood. I had to remove the tool because she was going to attack again and I really did not want to stress her out or even cause her injury (a broken fang is a serious wound). This is a spider that I would never even consider handling.
People might wonder "why?" "Why spiders, and why BIG HAIRY spiders that can and will bite you?" Honestly, most Tarantulas are sweet as pie. These are arch predators on THEIR level (not in the food chain of course, but in their category, they are the big guns). They have LONG life spans. Even the males can live 10 years. Females are known to live up to 30 years, possibly longer. That's old. My poor faithful dogs cannot expect to live that long. These are venerable creatures. Predators. Yet they can be handled, allowed to walk about on you, as long as you treat them with respect. They are alien as well, they are nothing like us. The way they move, the way they process food and waste, the way they breath, etc. And, believe it or not, they come in some pretty incredible color variations. I have not yet seen a Tarantula that could be called "ugly." They are each a little work of art in patterns and coloration.
I would like to see more people warm up to keeping these giant spiders.
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