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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Eighth Eye Blind" data-source="post: 243162" data-attributes="member: 49683">One easy way to tell if it's a Calisoga is to piss it off and let it bite you. Calisoga venom isn't quite up to the level of an old world species, but it does command much greater respect than the wimpy nibble of an Aphonopelma. I've never taken a hit from one, but people I know say that it's more like a hornet string than the typical honey bee pain that a new world species deals out.It's not, of course, the recommended way to distinguish the genus but it will get the job done in a pinch (pun intended).^^^ This.Spider taxonomy is one of the most difficult subjects there is. Humans can't agree on a lot of it. AI is 90% useless for this kind of thing (at least until it gets much. much more training on the subject).As an example, there was a species of California tarantula first identified in the 1870's and named Eurypelma californicum. People studied these for decades - well into the 2000's, in fact - and they became something of a standard model for looking at the circulatory system of spiders.Well, it turns out there's no such thing as a Eurypelma californicum. Somebody took a closer look about fifteen years ago and realized that what everybody was calling E. californicum was actually just a local variant of the species Aphonopelma hentzi - one of the most common tarantulas in the US. Several hundred research papers now have to be reevaluated to try and straighten it all out.Experts in the field blew the ID on E. californicum for 140 years. There's no way anybody should trust AI about tarantula taxonomy. It'll be another decade or two before AI is smart enough to figure it out.</blockquote>

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