reaction to sound

[Jon Taylor]

I was recently sorting my mp3's on my computer and was playing random tracks deciding if i wanted to keep them or not when out of the corner of my eye i saw my B.Smithi acting strange. The track was a sound effect with a steady tone increase, once it hit a certain pitch my smithi started tapping it's legs on the glass. Since i got this spider it's not behaved exactly how I've observed it's species before so just thought this a new little quirk. I decided to see if it would do it again and it did at exactly the same point on the track.

I found this interesting but have no idea why it's doing it, I can only imagine that it's picking up the sound vibrations on the glass and is responding to it with the tapping. If anyone has any idea what my spider is doing please let me know or if you've experianced anything simular.

The tapping was a fast vibration on the glass using the front pair of legs. It didn't seem agitated by the event and as soon as the sound stopped it went back to it's usual spot.

[James Roberts]

ive only been into t's for a year now however that sounds like mating behaviour to me (from all the vids ive seen on youtube)
but it only usually seems to be arboreal t's that vibrate the glass

[Jon Taylor]

That was my first thought. However it's still very young, only 3" LS atm

[Phil Rea]

Interesting. Maybe something in the tank was resonating, and causing the spider to tap. I don't think it necessarily indicates mating behaviour.

[James Box]

while playing guitar i often noticed my P imperator scorpions both facing me and sometimes scrabbling up the side towards me...
i took it as a compliment, but they were probably trying to get me to keep the noise down
that's really odd and interesting behaviour in your spider, though!
if it's mating behaviour, may be a rather precocious spider as it sounds a bit young...
also i think if a male T thinks a female is nearby and it's fully loaded, it'll probably tap anything, glass or otherwise, regardless of being terrestrial or arboreal, i think.

[Alex Ferguson]

Thats quite interesting, i think i may have to hook me ipod and watch to see if any of mine react.

[Mrs Linda Street]

Hi, maybe they've all got rhythm ;

[Nicola Dolby]

Whatever you do, stay don't play pokies Alanis Morissette, they hate the stuff! Then again they like Led Zeppelin (at least mine do) so they've no taste. The music I like just sends my spids to sleep!

[Matthew Baines]

All our pets like psytrance , but we seem too have a problem with the water dragons disliking gabba.

[matthew spooner]

for the past couple of weeks i have been experimenting with tarantula sound reactions, testing responses from arboreal/terrestrial/burrowing species with different volumes of various different tracks, i have tested the reactions to the high range, mid range and low range of each song and have been working out a pattern, i have found that burrowing species react to a low sound at a high volume but terrestrial and arboreal species tend to react more to the mid high sounds. they all have different reactions, with the terrestrial diving straight to its hide, the arboreal moved to a lower part of its bark and the burrowing came out of his burrow and went straight into a strike pose. i am still doing some work on this and am writing something up, when it is done i hope to have it published in the journal. the terrestrial i used for this experiment was a b.klaasi, the arboreal was p.rufilata and the burrowing species was c.crawshayi