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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Allthingsterrarium" data-source="post: 83904" data-attributes="member: 3930"><p>Hey everybody! I have to say that since raising reptiles, amphibians, arachnids, insects and other terrarium animals is one of my greatest passions that I am naturally curious about how it all started. I mean people, especially kids have been catching and trying to keep small animals pretty much forever but I'm talking about the organized terrarium culture and professional breeding as we see it today. I would assume the hobby as we know it was largely in it's infancy around the early 70s because that's when I heard bearded dragons for one thing were first imported and by then we had developed better lighting, heating and humidity solutions and I've heard of certain species like leopard geckos living into their 20s. Before the 70s the keeping of these animals at least from what I've noticed seems by comparison to today rare. I know a lot of people had turtles from pretty early on and occasionally you would see someone with a large boa constrictor and sometimes rich people and circus performers would have an alligator or something but again that's nothing compared to the 2000s. Tarantulas however are on of the biggest enigmas to me because even today many people think they are the scariest creepy crawlies out there even though most are harmless. No doubt this fear was added to by the monster movies of the 50s and 60s. I would think tarantulas especially are a more recent phenomenon for the pet community but then again I talked to some guy who answered some tarantula questions I had before I even got one who had been around them for 40 years which again points to the early 70s and I've even heard of females of the mexican red knee which is of course a very long lived species reaching close to 40 years of age in captivity so obviously people must have been keeping them for a while in order to measure such a life span. Once again back in the 50s and 60s live tarantulas were being used as props in scary movies so clearly there must have been some captive tarantulas in captivity at the though whether or not they were captive bred is questionable. Basically does anybody know anything about how long people have been raising tarantulas as a serious hobby and not just an occasional novelty back in the day? Enlighten me <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite1" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>

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