Solifugae/ camel spider

[Lisa britton]

Hi,

I am looking for any information any body has, either by keeping themselves or know about papers written on soilifgae/camel spiders. I am looking for basic husbandry and life expectancy in captivity.

Many info would be great

Thank you

[Christopher Smallman]

You are braver than me to keep these

http://www.arachnology.be/pages/Solifugae.html

http://www.answers.com/topic/camel-spider

Not sure if this will be of help for you.

Chris.

[Colin D Wilson]

I managed to keep one alive for a few months, thats all.

Bought a gravid female, you could see the eggs stored in the abdomen.

After reading what i could and taking on board what i was told by some previous keepers i housed her in a petpal type tank, 2-3 inches of dry sandy peat mix, gave her several hiding areas by stacking bark pieces at one end, added a small water dish.
She was kept quite warm in the day (via an over head heat source) and was exposed to day light for a few hours per day. at night the heating was turned off completely.
She fed quite well, but didn't reproduce, she was active right up untill the day i found her lying in a position that didn't look right and on checking she was dead.

Other keepers i spoke to at the time had chosen different heating methods......
one chap kept his hot throughout the day and moved it to the cellar at night to be damp and cold, his spider seemed to cope with that ok.
another chap kept his at the same temp all the time (80degs i think) and his adjusted fine too.
I'm not sure how long these particular spiders lived compared to what mine did.

There's a chap in the states that just has them in deli tubs and gets a decent life span out of them ...go figure eh?

This species seems to be hit or miss getting things right, unfortunately i missed and i think the spider would have been better off back where it came from.

[Christian Elowsky]

There's a chap in the states that just has them in deli tubs and gets a decent life span out of them ...go figure eh?

Colin,

You and I agree on a great number of things!

The best way to think of these animals is to compare them to shrews. They move fast, they eat like monsters, and disturbances tend to stress them to the point of killing them. Dr. Warren Savary here in the US had some luck by putting them in containers, placing those in drawers, and then forgetting about them! He had one live for a few months that way.

His main site is here:

http://www.solpugid.com/index.htm

We're thinking about getting him back to our conference in the future.

Also, I have read that putting obstacles around the perimeter of the enclosure helps to prevent them from running in circles along the wall of the enclosure. Other than that, while there is a lot of interest in them, and many are available, both natives and imported, I have yet to read anyone being able to keep them for more than a few months. I suspect this is a group which only a few species will ever do well in captivity and to get to that point, many are going to have very short life spans.

Good luck should you choose to give it a run.

[Grant Brown]

I had one for about 3-4 months. I gave it a deep mix of sand, grit and gravel with aquarium coompost (that loamy stuff). It was kept damp towards the bottom and the top was kept bone dry, like a crust. It was most active during twilight and I kept the temperature a few degrees above ambient (i.e cool mornings, hot midday, cooler nights) and it seemed fine. My specimen was from the Rhagodidae, rather than the Eremobates that most people seem to find in the US. I'd just assume that anything over 4 months is pretty awesome, but all this stuff about deli cups etc is plain meh. If I kept tarantulas in deli cups they'd probably live longer too - metabolism ~ feeding ~ activity = lifespan. Speed up the metabolism and the lifespan is bound to hit the upper limit sooner than if you practically tie them up and starve them. My approach was to give a fairly large enclosure with plenty of cover and obstacles, and deep substrate to allow burrowing. It seemed pretty satisfied - it's behaviour tended to vary from several hours of digging tunnels to perhaps 2-3 hours of wandering about, with a couple hours inactivity. This just seemed to repeat at the cooler parts of the day.

Personally, I think they are like the carnivorous plants of the arachnid group: easy once you know how, but with a reputation for difficulty. If you bear in mind they are an annual group (or at most semi annual in the wild as far as people seem to think) and we get them WC, at various points in their life, then a few months is pretty good going.

As for researchers, check out the work of Martin Muma and Fred Punzo. Punzo literally wrote the book on these (disputes over images aside) and Muma worked on them for many years out in New Mexico. Other than that, there's a research base out in South America, but the ones across there are quite different it seems and we don't see them in the hoby as far as I'm aware.

[Lisa britton]

Thank guys,

I had one a few years back and lived for a few months,( High temp during the day, room temp at night) I am just interested in other people's experinece and if could improve on my husbndry if/when I get another.

[Michael Olsinia]

Some interesting information in this thread:

http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?t=59006

[Grant Brown]

Some interesting information in this thread:

http://www.arachnoboards.com/ab/showthread.php?t=59006

Oh dear god no!

That thread is just a minefield of mis-information (except from a few users). Right near the start he states "it has been two yrs since hatched" yet the dates show just over one year to start with! (August 2004 - October 2005 - and that's including egg -> juvenile stages etc. We usually only get them as adults, which cuts even more time off them). It is January in the first post, but that is still not 2 years lifespan. That pretty much sums up the rest of the content for me...

Plus, it seems everyone is obsessed with reducing feeding to increase lifespan. This is hypothesised to work on just about ANY animal, there's even some crazy (maybe not?) humans doing this to increase their lifespan. I'd rather have the animal behaviour in a more natural manner, than have some inactive, immobile animal kept on the edge of starvation just so that I could watch it do nothing for 12 months or more, rather than behave in an interesting manner and complete it's life in 6 months or so. I just feel like we don't try the same with UK natives, yet most of them only a year - I bet I could even find some work to show lifespan increases with less feeding or such.

[Michael Olsinia]

It's been a while since I read that thread right through, but I don't remember anyone talking about starving their solifugids. Only feeding once a week is quite comparable to feeding a tarantula. But I think the information on hibernation, and the direct quotes from Punzos book make that thread a really good reference. There is also a thread somewhere that talks about solifugids moulting. IIRC, they take a long time to moult, and appear quite lifeless beforehand. Perhaps people are giving up on them prematurely?

[Colin D Wilson]

Whilst we're on this subject, Did anyone video/record Jenny Dobsons talk on solifugids at the 2008 lectures?
It was a riveting talk, covering solifugids from natural habitatat to breeding in captivity.

[James Box]

i think it was me that used the cellar to cool them at night to whom Colin referred.

i had a yellow, which was a little weak when i got her, and a black (i've forgotten the genera for them, it's been a while), and they lasted i think a couple months. the Yellow one died first.
they were fascinating, i kept them on sand, and they burrowed and burrowed. very industrious creatures!
i didn't find them "scary" at all, but then i didn't bother them much except to check they were alive and feed them.

the problem is that they are rather expensive for such short lived creatures. if only people were actively breeding them, we could do what many keepers do with Mantids...get a breeding group going and keep them in the collection that way. would make it more fun and less gutting then buying something expensive and have the poor thing die not long after.

[Grant Brown]

It's been a while since I read that thread right through, but I don't remember anyone talking about starving their solifugids. Only feeding once a week is quite comparable to feeding a tarantula. But I think the information on hibernation, and the direct quotes from Punzos book make that thread a really good reference. There is also a thread somewhere that talks about solifugids moulting. IIRC, they take a long time to moult, and appear quite lifeless beforehand. Perhaps people are giving up on them prematurely?

Ah, maybe I have that thread mixed up with the other one that bands around. Although, I have punzo's book and it states things a lot differently from the perceptions of many hobbyists. I may have a re-read as it's been a while, but I recall never getting the opinion they lived more than a season (year)/ season and a half.

James: If that black one was sold as a "Giant black banded solifuge" from Egypt or something, then it's from the Rhagodidae. They range in size, so I had quite a small one, still a giant apparently. You can tell (other than by general appearance) because the anal opening (operculum? or that a Phalangid only bit?) is on the ventral side, the others (Galeodidae etc) it's more central or dorsal. Never have had time to get it down to genus or species yet however. The yellow one could be various, but we mostly only get Galeodes spp. across here that are yellow and are fairly common. It doesn't help however that one gets sold as "Galeodes arabicus" which as far as I can tell is not a valid species name (G.arabs is IIRC).

[James Box]

Ah, maybe I have that thread mixed up with the other one that bands around. Although, I have punzo's book and it states things a lot differently from the perceptions of many hobbyists. I may have a re-read as it's been a while, but I recall never getting the opinion they lived more than a season (year)/ season and a half.

James: If that black one was sold as a "Giant black banded solifuge" from Egypt or something, then it's from the Rhagodidae. They range in size, so I had quite a small one, still a giant apparently. You can tell (other than by general appearance) because the anal opening (operculum? or that a Phalangid only bit?) is on the ventral side, the others (Galeodidae etc) it's more central or dorsal. Never have had time to get it down to genus or species yet however. The yellow one could be various, but we mostly only get Galeodes spp. across here that are yellow and are fairly common. It doesn't help however that one gets sold as "Galeodes arabicus" which as far as I can tell is not a valid species name (G.arabs is IIRC).

that might be it! very different build to Galeodidae, too. much more squat with short little legs, whereas the Galeodes thingy was spindly.

[Grant Brown]

that might be it! very different build to Galeodidae, too. much more squat with short little legs, whereas the Galeodes thingy was spindly.

Yeah, they dig a lot. I have one pickled, I'll try photograph it down the scope and post it. The Rhagodidae all seem to have that look about them -very squat and chunky. The Galeodes ones are all legs, very spindley and quite amazing to watch.

[Colin D Wilson]

i think it was me that used the cellar to cool them at night to whom Colin referred.

Certainly was James,
I wasn't sure of all the details so i hoped you would offer your research/husbandry notes.