Spotlight: Psalmopoeus cambridgei

Its no secret that I like green tarantulas better than all other spiders.  I don't know why it is, because green has never been all that high on my list of favorite colors, and tarantulas come in all sorts of insane colors.  Purple and black starburst patterns, bright orange, neon blue, you name it.  But those I find most pleasing to the eye are the ones that come in various shades of green. 

My first green tarantula was the Psalmopoeus cambridgei.  These hail from Trinidad, where they get their common name, the "Trinidad Chevron."  I'm not a fan of common names, as many of them are misleading - but these are very aptly named.  On the tips of their toes, they sport bright orange chevrons, similar to the Nike symbol.  The rest of them is a lovely olive green with an intricate pattern of black/dark green stripes on the abdomen. 

If you were a Psalmopoeus cambridgei, your little slice of real estate would look something like this:

Except that you would likely be looking down from the top of one of those trees.  These big green beauties are arboreal, tree loving spiders.  They max out at about seven diagonal inches.

The neat thing about the species in the Psalmopoeus genus is that they are one of a small number of New World genera that lack the urticating bristles on their abdomen, something that most tarantulas originating in the American continents posses.  Being New World tarantulas, however, they also lack medically significant venom.  Because of this, mother nature has blessed these spiderkids with a fantastic alternative to itchy hairs and painful bites.  Speed.

I'm personally attached to this species because it was my first of the Psalmopoeus genus, and the first species I have ever worked with that had the ability to run extremely fast.  My first, who has grown into a lovely juvenile female, when I opened her shipping vial, ran up my arm, panicked, ran back down, and took a flying leap into the vial she was to be housed in.  It all took about 0.5 seconds, and was over before I could blink.  Right then and there, I named her Lightning.

Since then, she and I have had a tumultuous relationship.  I occasionally request small favors from her, such as documenting photographs, not flying out of the lid when I crack it to put food inside, and refraining from eating my face off during rehousings.  So far, she has done so grudgingly, and I don't take for granted that it will continue.  However, every interaction I have with her gives me a further window into her psyche.

Psalmopoeus are fairly reclusive animals.  They like their privacy, their safety and security, and they will go to rather entertaining means to achieve this.  My lady started out in an entirely transparent enclosure, which was soon filled with a maze of tube webs with substrate woven into them.  For a very long time, my photo-ops looked like this:

 Lightning, you have a beautiful toe....at least I knew that much.  

They have a tendency to make what hobbyists pretty much uniformly refer to as the classic Psalmo "dirt curtain."  Not only will they web themselves into a cozy corner, but they will gather dirt and other bits and pieces of anything you may leave around, and decorate until it is completely enshrouded in web and dirt.  You will be lucky to have confirmation that you do indeed have a pet spider, but they are easily lured out with food. 

Tong feeding this baby is one of the highlights of my week.  She will saunter over to the prey as I hold it in the tongs, put her front legs on it as slowly and tentatively as can be, until I let my guard down momentarily and believe that she's going to be gentle.  Then without warning, she rips her meal from the tongs with the force of a professional wrestler, and disappears back behind her dirt curtain.  

Recently, I placed an order with a dealer that was offering cambridgei as a freebee.  I quickly jumped on that offer, in hopes of raising up a potential mate for Lightning in the future.  Having a juvenile that is quickly bordering on adult, I had no idea the amount of sickeningly adorable oozing cuteness that is a cam spiderling, until I opened the shipping vial, and this came strolling out.

For a hopeful stroke of luck, I named this spiderling Mojo, hoping it would tip the balance of fate in a more masculine direction.  He better have some serious Mojo if he is to deal with Lightning's high maintenance personality when he grows up.

Psalmopoeus cambridgei are notoriously easy to breed, and therefore very popular and frequently given away as freebees.  If you think this one spiderling is cute, imagine a whole incubator full of these fuzzy little sock-wearing babies.  

Here, so you don't have to.

(Note the copyright - this is not my photo!)

All in all, these are really entertaining little buggers.  Occasionally they get feisty and decide they'd like to eat you for lunch, but as long as you are prepared for the speed, they are fairly fun and easy to work with.  

My favorite thing about Lightning is my ability to pause and "reason" with her.  It seems that prodding her with a paintbrush does not get me my way - but taking a ten second breather followed by calmly explaining in a reasonable tone what it is I would like her to do, typically is followed by her cooperation.  Now I'm not crazy, and this could simply be spontaneous mood change due to my giving a short attention span time to reset.  But I'd like to think that we have an agreement not to harm one another.  She is not a girl I ever plan to nonchalantly allow to stroll along my arm, but our working relationship has always been quite plainly and clearly communicated. 

Deep down, she really just wants to buy the world a Coke.