Pterinochilus murinus "Brown Form" where are they?

[Rick Stallard]

I can see why the orange form would have become more popular for time; they are a striking spider. However, I'm a bit surprised at the short-sighted, even if accidental, decision by breeders to let the brown form disappear from the US hobby. I understand the principal of supply and demand, and that raising this form probably wasn't as lucrative, but to have no one interested in them? That's a true shame. I will definitely send out a couple emails to dealers with the ability to import and see if we can't get some stateside. I hope others might do the same.

Of course, the irony is that the orange form is a dime a dozen now, with many folks giving them away.

A grey/black version you say? Oh, wow.

this just shows how everything is controlled by money. Even with all the "expert" breeders we are supposed to have in the hobby, if it aint worth anything, why breed it.

 

[Poec54]

Poec, I bred the brown form in the nineties, they were one of the first sacks I hatched out. With that in mind, I am sure you hatched them and Bryant, and Mark Hart, so we would have had enough males maturing into the first part of this century to keep them going. I have heard through the grapevine that the starburst was being bred into the Usambara form , but I have not actually run across anyone who actually claims to have done it. In the nineties the word was that the brown form was very common. I had also heard that there was a population in Florida. I only heard it once, and have not heard it again, so it was probably not true. Either way I want them back in my collection

The problem with the brown form in the 1990's was: 1) w/c adults were common and cheap, 2) very few people wanted to own any OW's back then, especially a brown defensive one, and 3) therefore there was little interest in breeding them. The brown form disappeared from lack of interest. In the meantime the hobby's shifted direction and now OW's are popular. Too late for the brown form.

The orange form was easier for dealers to sell, but it's not like people were waiting in line for them. Still wasn't a big seller (nowhere near as desirable as any of the NW's were). I seriously doubt anyone was crossing the brown and orange forms. No one knew they were the same species. It was only a small segment of the market that would consider buying either one, so demand wasn't hard to keep up with. It's a prolific species to begin with.

I doubt Mark Hart would have bothered breeding the brown form as slings only went for a for a few dollars and the market was very limited. His goals were bigger than that. I traded a number of the OW slings I hatched out to Bryant Capiz, so part of those he sold came from me. Bryant wasn't into OW's at all (except Poecs) and he thought I was crazy for wanting them.

Florida gets 40-50" of rain every summer, which is way too wet for murinus to survive. The ground's soggy, puddles all over, the air is thick; it's like a wet sauna for 4 months straight. Some days we'll get 2 or 3". Semi-arid species won't make it. The flip side is that there's not much rain the rest of the year, and species that could handle the wet summers, wouldn't be able to make it thru the prolonged annual droughts.

 

[Poec54]

this just shows how everything is controlled by money. Even with all the "expert" breeders we are supposed to have in the hobby, if it aint worth anything, why breed it.

If there aren't many people wanting to buy slings of a species, what are you going to do, raise 100 of them yourself to adults? Are you going to shell out the money for 100 adult cages? So yes, it's about money and you're not necessarily wide-eyed and innocent either.

 

[DTG]

I think both of you have a point, but we have moved from the main point of the post, is there anyone out there that still has the brown form. I have no idea if anything I have mentioned is true, I was away from the hobby for a long while and when I came back in, everything had changed. I don't breed anything that I will not keep if I am stuck with it. Rick, what you say is true when you mentioned that animals can have a fashionable time, when they are popular and then when everybody is breeding, interest wanes. I believe that even if the interest in a particular species diminishes, it will pick up eventually. I have seen it with snakes, turtles, frogs and tarantulas. You will always have your bread and butter species, Chromatopelma cyaneopubescens and Avicularia versicolor, but even if you breed Pterinochilus and the market becomes glutted, you can market them and interest will come back. Some breeders give them as freebies or wholesale them out. I do both those things and also trade. As you mentioned, money is always a factor. Rick Stallard, there has to be a value to make any hobby worth it. Luckily we live in Countries where even bottlecaps and thimbles have a marketable value. It costs the same to feed a 300 dollar spider as it does a five dollar spider. I cannot believe that Aphonopelma seemani is in demand right now. I had them in the nineties and they didn't really interest me. I will stick with Ephebopus murinus, in my humble opinion they are more interesting