Seems related to her abdomen.
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Tarantula mouth covered in mites
- Thread starter x_raphael_xx
- Start date
Keep the corpse and observe it. you may see a large pupa emerge.
if this happens the true culprit was a small-headed fly.
ornithoctoninae are absolutely plagued by these guys. I remember a friend of mine having a really big one emerge from a tarantula that seemed just fine before it matured and then the larva killed it.
if this happens the true culprit was a small-headed fly.
ornithoctoninae are absolutely plagued by these guys. I remember a friend of mine having a really big one emerge from a tarantula that seemed just fine before it matured and then the larva killed it.
- Messages
- 772
- Location
- Plymouth UK
I wondered if she was compacted. But she did poop. I'll never know.
small-headed flies will lodge themselves into a book lung and wait there dormant for several years before beginning to consume the host. the symptom is often swelling around the book lungs- the larva eats nonvital parts first, then finally goes for the nervous system and completes the life cycle.
last year we caught a whole bunch of olios giganteus from tucson and they almost all had small-headed flies in them. even the widows we got all had them, too.
the only spiders i caught that day that DIDNT have em were just two olios and a couple of hogna, minus the tarantulas
- Messages
- 772
- Location
- Plymouth UK
I've never heard or seen such flies here in the UK.
they're obscure and poorly known by the public. Most times you get it from a wild-caught spider from a hot humid region. In the USA sometimes you'll get an aphono carrying one, the species in the USA that attack aphonopelma tend to be pretty huge, large like a horse-fly almost
