Unusual Gramastola behaviour

[Rich.Harrington]

I just observed something odd with my G.rosea, I was sorting out some other things and as you do had a look in on the spider. She was having an explore, since this level of activity is few and far between with pet rocks, I stayed for a while to watch. After 20 minutes or so it seemd more than simple pacing, as she would cover an area, lay down webbing then move on. (this was not simple trace lines, but looked more like feeler ones for distrubances)

I took a guess that she may be hungry (though after 2 roaches this morning it seemed odd) and threw another in to see the reaction. This is where things got strange, the initial thump of a roach landing at flinging velocity caused the usual tenseup of the spider. This was followed with investigation as per normal, however soon as the roach began moving, the spider proceeded to tap one leg onto the floor rapidly. The roach then made a quick excape upwards and had to be caught to suffer another flinging.

This time after the intitial thump, the spider again tapped the floor rapidly with at least 3-4 legs, and pedipalps before investigating. It almost looked like the kind of drumming you often see from male true spiders entering a females web. This time when the spider approached the roach again moved away, slightly slower this time. The spider proceeded to follow at a small distance each time the roach moved, yet didn not spring to attack. This happened for the length of the enclosure before the roach again went up, and after some minutes the spider lost interest and returned to the usual rock position and place.

Since I generally operate on a natural viewpoint, I felt the roach and earned it's freedom and returned it to the colony.

If it were not a spider, nor I knew better I would have said this was an animal getting exited. Just wondering if anyone else has observed anything similar before?

[Colin D Wilson]

This is quite normal behaviour, well it happens here a lot anyway.
About half of the Grammostolas here have laid down sheet like webbing and react just the same when confronted with food
The worst for webbing is my daughters rosea (the tank looks like a lividium lives there)
and i have a G formosa female that follows food around for several minutes before attacking.
I think this is what makes the whole hobby so fascinating, they're all different in some way even specimens from the same egg sac show differing "personallities"
I've just re housed a colony of 9 H gigas small juveniles into a larger tank and one has taken to being arboreal and made a little webbing in a plastic plant all the rest went straight down the pre made holes in the substrate.