Heat lamp question

[Stanley A. Schultz]

Hey stanley, thx for that.
I was suspecting something along those lines, I'm glad you agree. ...

Here is another one of my "temperature" rants. I do this a lot and often get into trouble for it. But I love playing the Devil's advocate. Somebody has to keep the "party line" from ossifying! Especially when it's wrong!

http://atshq.org/forum/showthread.php?t=13322

Pay particular attention to posting #13.

Enjoy your well weathered tarantula!

[Stanley A. Schultz]

Tom -

I'm going to pick on you a bit, not because I'm mad at you, but because I need to play the Devil's advocate to get you aimed in the right direction. You need to understand what you don't know about your tarantulas.

... I was only keeping them at 26 degrees, I am keeping my tropical spiders at 28. Maybe they can survive at 20 degrees. ...

Please visit the following links:

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/arachnid_world/message/25439

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/arachnid_world/message/25443

http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/arachnid_world/message/25447

http://atshq.org/forum/showthread.php?t=13322

... Battery chickens ...

This is apparently a British phrase that I'm not familiar with. Explain please?

... I want my spiders to be happy. ...

The problem is that you're using a very strong prejudice based on a vertebrate and warm blooded, avian and mammalian model. Tarantulas are neither warm blooded nor even vertebrates. They split off from our line of evolution (or the other way around!) so long ago that they barely share the same genetics and biochemistry as we. Their anatomy, physiology, and natural history are so outlandish and unconventional from our perspective that just about anything we do, based on our vertebrate and warm blooded, avian and mammalian point of view is likely to kill them.

For instance, what do you mean by "happy?" How do you gauge "happy" in a spider? They don't smile or even wag their tails!

And, what sort of presumptions or prejudices are you using to imagine what you think might make them happy? Something you picked up from a TV documentary? From someone else on the Internet who may be even more poorly informed than you? By imagining what would make you happy in the same circumstances and then projecting that onto your presumption about how or what a tarantula feels? Doesn't this sound a bit "tentative" to you?

Now do you begin to understand just how self centered, wrongly prejudiced, and ignorant we are about these creatures? And that most of us don't even realize it?

It's a true testament to tarantulas' resilience and hardiness that they're capable of living in our care at all!

Under these circumstances, the best we can do is institute the barest of life support for them, lest we do something stupidly based on our vertebrate and warm blooded, avian and mammalian prejudices and kill them. And learn from our mistakes.

Over the last fifty years we've managed to learn a little about them and what they need to live and even thrive in a cage. That's what we're doing here.

In the next fifty years we're going to learn how to breed most of them in captivity. That's a whole new ballpark, and we're just starting to understand the game rules. We haven't done it enough yet that we can even see any patterns or consistencies in their breeding that we can base global rules on. We've just barely walked through the gate into the park and got our first look at the ball and the pitch.

Now, you need to begin to shed your vertebrate and warm blooded, avian and mammalian prejudices and try to imagine what it's like to be a tarantula. Stay awake a few nights, watching them with a red light so you know what they're doing when you're otherwise sound asleep. Watch them during the day when you have a few spare moments. Try to understand from their perspective why they do what they do. Why they don't do what you would normally expect them to.

If you ever wondered what it would really be like to meet a space alien, here's about as close as you can get at the moment! And, trust me, it's very good practice.

Since we're fresh out of little, green men at the moment, enjoy your tarantulas!

[Colin D Wilson]

Hi Stan,

Informative and entertaining posts yet again!!!

For your info my friend......

Battery Chickens:...Chickens kept uniformly caged in large barns or buildings for egg production and / or reared for slaughter (comes, i believe, from the armed forces term "Artillery Battery" regarding uniformed lines of loaded guns)

"Happy":... in the UK we use this word to describe a vast number of situations.
we will say "she's happy with the present" which speaks for itself really..or..
"the spiders happy in there" which intentionally means the environmental conditions are correct, not really implying the spider has emotions that have been met, just the fact that everythings OK.

what a language !!!

Regards

Colin

[Peter Lacey]

Its really hard to argue against Stan. Too well informed, been doing it far too long. Always a great read, always enlightening, dangerous to contradict

I think you're quite right about relaying our individual emotions on the pets we care for whether that be vertebrates or inverts. The phrase "happy" is well defined by Colin, perhaps inappropriate but part of our daily language.

In the UK, like much of Europe, we can experience 4 seasons in one day and our homes aren't set to automatically adjust the temperature. We therefore employ various means to make sure the temperature isn't so changeable for our pets. Perhaps we could get away without it, perhaps we are providing them a luxury but if we can control the temperature to imitate that of its natural environment (in best conditions) we feel we've been responsible keepers. There are other reasons, perhaps by increasing the temperature we'll see more of our pets; by adjusting temperatures we may reflect that of the seasons and perhaps help with breeding and molts; maintaining temperatures may help plants or other "cleaning insects" and of course keep the live food active.

Having said all this its only my first T (L. klugi) that receives additional heat and come the summer I think she'll be giving up that luxury.

[Peter Lacey]

One more point I had intended to add. If we can't measure their happiness perhaps we could measure their stress, at least hypothetically. Whilst you've illustrated how well the tarantula tolerates low temperatures its worth exploring (as you suggest) the benefits of higher temperatures.

[Taki Tsonis]

I'm not calling you a liar or saying you don't know what you're talking about. I'm sure your system works. In fact, it may work quite well. My point is that it's largely unnecessary in most circumstances.

In that vein, I'd be tempted to challenge you to set up a few babies and partly grown tarantulas that are siblings to your other ones as I've described, so you could compare them with those that you care for using your methods. It would be an interesting experiment. You may be pleasantly surprised. So might I!

Enjoy your sauna tarantulas!

He, he, I think I didn't quite phrased my initial response correctly. I only do that with a handfull of T's, namely my T blondi's and apophysis and a couple of P metallicas which I wanted to grow quicker. I stumbled on the idea by mistake actually, we had a particularly cold winter for us last year and I was worried about some of my avic slings in particular. Out of desperation I stuck them in the open area (loft) above my 600 litre tropical fish aquarium cause it always felt pretty stuffy when I opened them to feed the fish. Well the results were mind boggling to say the least. EVERYTHING I stuck in there moulted instantly and repeatedly. I thought I'd try some of my Aphonopelma's that were testing my patience with their growth rates and it worked. A 3-4cm chalcodes sling that hadn't moulted in 8 months, moulted within a week of being in the fish tank. And then it proceeded to moult again within a month. THIS WAS AN APHONOPELMA FOR HEAVENS SAKE!
Now I do agree with what you say, but specifically above my fish tank, I def. have faster growth rates. Having said that though, it doesn't seem to work as well in my sauna atempted terrariums, so I'm starting to think that there's some other factor helping things along, like a difference in the air content that's evaporating from a large, healthy aquarium??? If any of you try this with your fishtanks, just contact me for my banking details

But on the whole I do agree with you Stan, thanks for the input.....

[Tom Forman]

lol Stan. Wasn't expecting all that info. It's going to take me while to read it.

Well thx for picking on me, atleast I am getting valuable information

I'm going to read it all but at the end of the day I am still sure I need this heatmat lol. I forgot to mention it goes down to 12 degrees in my spider room at times and that is definetely too cold right?

Tsako, your post was very interesting. First of all I am jealous of your 600 liter fish tank! but I was thinking of doing the same with my spiders.

PS Stan: I am presuming you don't heat your crickets, waxworms or roaches? I tried breeding them at 24 degrees but found that to be too cold..

[Tom Forman]

Alright I have read most of it and I feel enlightened

I can fully understand your arguments Stan but you have been basing all of your arguments on fully grown tarantulas.
I have only got spiderlings (I guess I should have mentioned this earlier) and I want them to grow fast so I will keep em on the warmer side rather than the cooler.


Appreciate all the help people.

I think this topic has been thouroughly covered now.

[Stanley A. Schultz]

... Battery Chickens:...Chickens kept uniformly caged in large barns or buildings for egg production and / or reared for slaughter (comes, i believe, from the armed forces term "Artillery Battery" regarding uniformed lines of loaded guns) ....

Oh! Now I see! Over here we call them egg factories or chicken factories. Horrible, smelly, dismal things.

... "Happy":... in the UK we use this word to describe a vast number of situations.
we will say "she's happy with the present" which speaks for itself really..or..
"the spiders happy in there" which intentionally means the environmental conditions are correct, not really implying the spider has emotions that have been met, just the fact that everythings OK.

what a language !!! ...

Pretty much the same over here. I just had to jump down Tom's throat to make sure we were on the same page.

Sorry if I was a bit severe, Tom.

[Stanley A. Schultz]

... PS Stan: I am presuming you don't heat your crickets, waxworms or roaches? I tried breeding them at 24 degrees but found that to be too cold..

We were moderately successful with hissing roaches, but our mealworms were a dismal failure. I never tried breeding crickets except as an experiment to see how it was done.

My general philosophy was that I was into keeping, breeding and selling tarantulas, not other bugs. So we routinely had something like two thousand crickets shipped to our home every week. I spent a lot of time sitting on the carpet in the spider room feeding bottle babies. Missed almost an entire season of Star Trek that way. (I think it was Deep Space Nine.) Finally picked it up on summer reruns. Now that's dedication!

Beam me up Scotty! Or, Dax. Or, whoever.