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General Tarantula Discussion
How To Know Post-Molt Exoskeleton Is Hardened?
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<blockquote data-quote="Eighth Eye Blind" data-source="post: 242675" data-attributes="member: 49683"><p>It's simple! Just get a degree in invertebrate zoology.</p><p></p><p>Joking aside, there's no truly good comprehensive references about tarantula biology. There are a lot of books written for hobbyists but in my experience all of them are about 70% correct and useful info and 30% total BS. There's quite a bit of old "wisdom" in the hobby that's nothing but mythology that's been handed down and simply taken as true over the years. </p><p></p><p>The same goes for the majority of sites you'll find on the net. I just saw a new post from an "expert" that talked about the differences between <em>B. smithi </em>and <em>B. hamorii.</em> The guy was completely wrong. There's an official publication that explains the taxonomic differences between these and other <em>Brachypelma</em> species that the guy had clearly never even heard of. He just made a video to draw clicks to his site without bothering to learn about what he was trying to teach.</p><p></p><p>Experienced keepers like the ones you'll find around here are your best source for general info on things like feeding and habitat and you'll get lots of great care tips from them. If you want hard-core biology and biochemistry, tho, you have to dig much deeper.</p><p></p><p>The basic problem is that there's no money in studying tarantulas so very few people do it. T's don't kill or seriously injure people and they don't damage crops or eat a significant load of insects (versus other spiders) so humans have no economic incentives to fund scientific study of them. The number of people who have truly deep academic knowledge about tarantula biology is probably in the low thousands world-wide and at least half of them are at pharma companies looking for new drug candidates in venom samples.</p><p></p><p>So if you really want to do research on tarantulas you literally need to do research on tarantulas. All of the expert-level info is locked away in scientific papers and monographs. You just gotta hit the nearest university library and start reading. You'll be up to speed in a just a couple of years. Sorry, best I can offer you.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Eighth Eye Blind, post: 242675, member: 49683"] It's simple! Just get a degree in invertebrate zoology. Joking aside, there's no truly good comprehensive references about tarantula biology. There are a lot of books written for hobbyists but in my experience all of them are about 70% correct and useful info and 30% total BS. There's quite a bit of old "wisdom" in the hobby that's nothing but mythology that's been handed down and simply taken as true over the years. The same goes for the majority of sites you'll find on the net. I just saw a new post from an "expert" that talked about the differences between [I]B. smithi [/I]and [I]B. hamorii.[/I] The guy was completely wrong. There's an official publication that explains the taxonomic differences between these and other [I]Brachypelma[/I] species that the guy had clearly never even heard of. He just made a video to draw clicks to his site without bothering to learn about what he was trying to teach. Experienced keepers like the ones you'll find around here are your best source for general info on things like feeding and habitat and you'll get lots of great care tips from them. If you want hard-core biology and biochemistry, tho, you have to dig much deeper. The basic problem is that there's no money in studying tarantulas so very few people do it. T's don't kill or seriously injure people and they don't damage crops or eat a significant load of insects (versus other spiders) so humans have no economic incentives to fund scientific study of them. The number of people who have truly deep academic knowledge about tarantula biology is probably in the low thousands world-wide and at least half of them are at pharma companies looking for new drug candidates in venom samples. So if you really want to do research on tarantulas you literally need to do research on tarantulas. All of the expert-level info is locked away in scientific papers and monographs. You just gotta hit the nearest university library and start reading. You'll be up to speed in a just a couple of years. Sorry, best I can offer you. [/QUOTE]
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How To Know Post-Molt Exoskeleton Is Hardened?
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