Tarantula exhibiting strand behaviour

[Ulthwe13]

First a little background info as it may be helpful. My Tarantula is a brachypelma boehmei I’ve had it for about 5 years now and he was just a sling when I first received him.(I say he but this is only my guess as I’ve never had him properly sexed). This is the first T I’ve ever kept as a pet. His enclosure contains a hide made from half a coconut, a small water dish and the substrate is vermiculite.

Yesterday morning I woke up quite early to find him on his back under a web mat he had created I was a little confused at how he’d got into this position but I assumed that he was in molt and so decided to leave him alone.

When I returned hours later expecting to find him molted but he had not although he was no longer on his back. Throughout the rest of the day he was acting fairly normal walking about the enclosure.

Later last night however he crawled into his water dish and has remained there ever since. His front legs are scrunched tight. There is about 2mm of water in the dish at the moment I haven’t seen any movement from him since getting into this position and I’m just wondering if this is normal T behaviour or something else?

I have attatched images of the web mat I found him laying under and him hiding in his water dish

 

[Rick Stallard]

It's a male and he made a sperm web. You can google sperm web and see what I'm talking about. He is ready to mate. He will live maybe a year now. His only purpose now is to mate, and die. I have some that like to hang around their water dish. keep your humidity at 50-60%. They like it kind of dry, but he might be one that likes water. Keep the dish full, he's big enough he won't drowned. I would use a mix of vermiculite and coconut fibre and make it maybe 4" deep or more if you can. They like to borrow.

 

[Ulthwe13]

Hi thanks for the reply I had a suspicion it may be a sperm web but was unsure do you have any idea about the flipping onto back and not molting behavoir though? it seems strange. I will add some more substrate though so he has plenty of room to burrow.

 

[Rick Stallard]

They make the web, crawl under it and deposit sperm on it. Then they use their pedipalp to soak up the sperm and store it. I've had males make 2-3 sperm webs before they are bred. That should be the only time you see one on it's back, and during molt. So, he's ready if you know of someone that has a MF and wants to breed, your set. I don't have a MF, but I'm sure someone here does and might want to get a breeding program going. Most times you can provide the male and get half the spiderlings.