Essays

Moseying: Exploring the Natural World

Are tarantula populations declining on the Llano Estacado?
October 10, 2007
Photo by Bill Loos, Sibley Board Member

“What happened to the tarantulas?” asked Emily Hurt of St. John’s Episcopal School of Odessa. She had called to set up a visit to the Sibley Nature Center on October 16th and had asked if we had a tarantula to show her 1st grade class, but I told her that the tarantula population at Sibley had disappeared.

“We have not seen one single tarantula along the trails at Sibley this year. The holes that we have watched for a decade or more never opened this year. Even wandering into parts of the pasture where there are no trails, we have not found any live tarantulas. We found one small hole that might have been a young tarantula’s home. Little balls of dirt were scattered near it, and it was closed off with webbing, but when we “jigged” the hole, nothing came out.”

This year, at my home in the country, I have not noticed any tarantulas during my morning walks with Teddy the dog. I asked folks that are often out in the oil patch if they had seen many tarantulas. Not one mentioned seeing the big “migrations” that are part of the Llano Estacado landscape after big rains. Some mentioned seeing individual tarantulas. I have driven about 5000 miles along West Texas and eastern New Mexico roads during the growing season this year, and I can remember only seeing two tarantulas (both on busy highways where I could not stop and photograph them for the Sibley website.) I emailed Mike Quinn, the chief entomologist for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and asked if he had heard of tarantulas disappearing in other areas, but he had not.

If you have seen tarantulas this year, please call me at 684-6827 Monday through Friday between the hours of 8 and 5. If you have taken any digital photographs of tarantulas this year, please bring us copies of those photos on a flash drive or CD.

When students and parents from Greenwood Elementary 4th grade were visiting on Friday October 5th I asked if anyone had seen tarantulas, two moms said they had seen three or four this year. One, who works at the High Sky Children’s Ranch, reported she had seen four females at the Ranch, but no males. “The males have the little short “fake legs” hanging down from their front legs, right?” and when I nodded, she continued, “I looked closely, and these were definitely females away from their holes, which I thought was a little unusual.”

The other mom, when she heard that I was wondering if tarantulas are disappearing (at least locally), said, “I know you are an animal lover, but it doesn’t bother me that they might be disappearing.” The first mom shook her head, “You know, I think they are declining. When we first moved to Greenwood, we saw them all the time, and we just do not see many any more.” The second mom answered with, “They creep me out. The first one I ever saw I chopped to pieces.”

People are scared of tarantulas. I have had big tough football coaches run from the room when I brought one out for people to hold. Since the eyes of a tarantula are on top of the head, a person is in very little danger from one walking across their hand – thousands of kids visiting the Sibley Nature Center have done so and not one ever was bitten. (If you have photographs or video of your child with a tarantula on its hand during a visit to the Sibley Nature Center, we would love to have a copy!)

Even if a person received a tarantula bite, not much would happen except for a “pinprick” and possibly a drop of blood. The one time that I was bitten (when I closed my hand around one), no welt or swelling occurred. Visitors to the Sibley Nature Center have often told us that they believed tarantulas were dangerously poisonous. Hollywood moviemakers count on that folk belief, and many movies have had the hero (including Indiana Jones) fall into a “pit of tarantulas,” which is a folktale in itself -- tarantulas are solitary creatures.

Visitors often claim that they have seen tarantulas jump. One summer a group of kids at the Sibley Nature Center tested the validity of that folk tale. We caught about a dozen tarantulas one day and did everything we could to make them jump, without ever succeeding. One male tarantula ran at us and even up the pants leg of one of the leaders, but it did not jump. (If anyone can bring us a video of tarantula jumping, we will believe that they jump – but we know that Hollywood moviemakers make them “jump” by tying a string to them and yanking them up!)

Some tarantulas have narrow-mouthed toads living in their burrows. (Tarantula burrows usually go straight down for 6-8 inches and then open up to a room about as big as a softball. Another tunnel leads down a few inches from the room, and probably serves as a drainage sump during rains.) The skin of the toads leaves a chemical substance on the walls of the burrow that keeps parasitical mites from attaching to the tarantulas. The tarantulas seem to protect the toads from their predators. Texas Parks and Wildlife magazine once had a series of photographs of a toad running and hiding under a tarantula when a garter snake approached.

Tarantulas defend themselves by urticating. When a tarantula is threatened it first raises its front legs up high. If the threat persists, it begins to rapidly rub its abdomen with its hindlegs. The hair on the abdomen detaches and floats in the air. If the hair finds the eye of a small predator, the barbed end of the hair will cause severe irritation. In the case of the tarantula, toad, and snake, the hair might land on the tongue of the snake and cause the snake to give up the chase of the toad.

If you report your sightings of tarantulas to us, you are participating in “citizen science.” Birdwatchers invented citizen science – amateur naturalists observing birds and keeping records. The phenomenon has spread to butterfly and dragonfly enthusiasts. Wildflower aficionados are beginning to keep records, too – there is now a website that records the “first bloom” of many species of wildflowers.

I hope we hear that thousands of tarantulas were seen this year – it would be a sad loss if tarantulas are indeed disappearing!