Growing Rates ??

[Neil Ashby]

Just a queiry !!

Can you sex a tarantula by the rate they are growing / molting ?

The reason i ask is , i purchased two Goliath juveniles at xmas and they recently molted within one day of each other !
If they continue to molt roughly the same time , does that mean they are both the same sex or not ?

Ive always been under the impression that males grow a lot faster than females so if one starts to molt quicker does it make it more likely to be a male ?

Cheers

oh ... my collection is ...

T.Blondi 2 x juveniles
B.Smithi adult fem
B.Smithi juvenile
P.Murinus adult fem
B.Vagan adult fem
B.Albopilosa adult fem
B.Emilia sub adult fem
G.Rosea adult fem
A.Seemani 2 x adult fem
B.Boehmi 1 x adult fem

and Emperor scorpion 1 x adult fem

[Stuart Baker]

This time next year I hope to be in a position to give you a well informed answer, as I'm hoping to do my dissertation on this very topic. From what I've observed I'd say that males do grow quicker than females, but I don't have any data to back this up...yet.

Stuart

[Neil Ashby]

When i bought the two goliaths , i chose the two smallest but chunkiest from the 12 specimens he had , based on the theory that they were more likely to be female because they grow slower !!

Fingers crossed !!

[Neil Ashby]

Just to let you know ive today bought myself a metallic pink toe ( avicularia metallica ) , 4" legspan roughly and looks female to me !

£20 from a local pet store , knocked `em down from £29.99 !!

[Nicola Dolby]

growth

Well done Neil, I can say now that whitetoes are fantastic tarantulas, and unlike some pretty adventurous. Mine has her web in one top corner of the tank, but she's hardly in there. she tends to sit on the side of the tank "sunbathing" during the day and at night its like she's on safari, playing around in the plants and on the cork bark in there. I'll sometimes sit and watch the crickets go into panic-mode as it starts to get dark. They really are beautiful tarantulas. As for growth, I would agree that males do mature much faster than females. I think I was told this is a natural thing to stop inbreeding from the same eggsack, though how that works with communal tarantulas such as some Poecilotherias I'm not sure. Good luck with the dissertation Stuart.