chile rose

[scott wilson]

hello there,a question for you all about my chile rose,which i believed to be an adult female,well she had a good moult afew months ago and has been eating well but has since gone off eating and last night in her burrow had completely webbed herself in,now today she has taken this web down and rolled it out like a carpet??? im sure its not a sperm web because she doesnt have tibial spurs etc,ive had a male chile before and was very obviousley male,small abdomen,spurs and large palps,,could she be gravid still after moulting some months ago??or is she just being weird....thanks everyone.

[Clinton Hogben]

Hi Scott

hello there,a question for you all about my chile rose,which i believed to be an adult female,well she had a good moult afew months ago and has been eating well but has since gone off eating and last night in her burrow had completely webbed herself in,now today she has taken this web down and rolled it out like a carpet??? im sure its not a sperm web because she doesnt have tibial spurs etc,ive had a male chile before and was very obviousley male,small abdomen,spurs and large palps,,could she be gravid still after moulting some months ago??or is she just being weird....thanks everyone.

I think she's just being weird
I think once a female moults the uterus/spermathacae etc all go with the old skin so in theory she becomes a virgin again and cant get preggers from any sperm stored from a previous mating at the time of the moult.
And i wouldn't imagine a female spider going into moult last time if she was already gravid ( but thats just a guess feel free to jump in and correct me here ) so shes probably just doing what spiders do and trying confuse us all the time
option (b) she's eaten to much and is going to moult again to allow for expansion but that depends on how old / how often she normally moults
Option (c) phantom pregnancy wild guess

All the best

Clinton

[Stanley A. Schultz]

hello there,a question for you all about my chile rose,which i believed to be an adult female, ... could she be gravid still after moulting some months ago?? ...

Let's be clear here, about what you mean by "gravid."

I'm don't know that a female tarantula can retain eggs internally through a molt. Off hand I can't think of any reason why not, by I don't remember anyone ever mentioning it before. If so, she might be quite capable of laying eggs almost as soon as she finished molting. Would the eggs hatch? Almost surely not unless she were immediately bred by a male. See the next paragraph.

Or, do you mean is she still capable of laying fertilized eggs? The answer to that one is an emphatic "No!" Female tarantulas store the male's sperm in spermathecae, little pockets inside their genital area. As they lay eggs the sperm are released to fertilize the eggs. (As opposed to being fertilized some time before being laid, like chicken eggs.) However, when a female tarantula molts, she also casts off the internal lining of her spermathecae with their enclosed sperm. We arachnoculturists like to describe it as "She becomes a virgin again." Hence, once she molts she is incapable of laying fertilized eggs until she's been bred again by a male.

... or is she just being weird...

I believe you answered this one in your next post.