The spider sense

[Yinnon Dolev]

I was thinking of a reserch subject to do with the spiders ability to sense where a food item is, and wanted to hear some opinions from the more expiranced T. keepers.

I have noticed with my T. (currly hair) that even while he is in his burrow, when I throw a food item into the enclosure, he will feel the movment, come out of his burrow for the food.
On the other hand, when I use tweesers and touch the front of his burrow, he dosn't budge.
Obviosly he can feel the diffrance between a food and threat. (did any one else notice this with other T's?)

This raised a few question for me:
1) Are the vibrations that the T picks up enhanced in any way using the webed "carpet" that he created outside his burrow, and if so, is this a machinisem that the T creates on purpose?

2) How specific are the "signals" that he recives? can he also derive with his senses where the vibration is coming from?

3) There is also the need to deprive the T from sensing a threat using other senses - for example, does he precive chemical signals that bugs emmit and I don't?

I know that with orb web spiders, the web design enables such signals to be sent,
do terrestrial T's also creat a web to map or tripwire their surrondings? If so, the main question would be, how they "anilise" the signals from the web?


I would love to hear any thoughts and comments on this!!
thanks,
Yinnon.

[Parsnip]

I usually don't find it too hard to impersonate a potential meal with forceps (or sometimes even my fingers when cleaning out). Having said that, a tarantulas ability too sense and assess vibrations through the ground and through movements in the air are extremely good. There's also a certain amount of chemoreception (tasting the air) involved, this is why and how some "less choosy" tarantulas offered prekilled food like mice etc find they're meal. Then there's eyesight, though generally very poor in the T world, is much more developed certain arboreals such as Avics which are well known to pluck meals from the air and in performing aerobatic displays, highwire and trapeze and generally leaping around when you least expect it!