Introductions!

[Mrs Linda Street]

Hi Chris, welcome to the forum

[chris carter]

Hi all

Hi all

I have collected Tarantulas for 15 years, in the summer of 1994 i took my children to london zoo, in the insect house they got out a Brachypelma smithi to show the public.

All the way home on the train my 10 year old son gave it the can i have one dad over and over again.

To my wifes horror i finally gave in and we bought him an adult Aphonopelma seemanni for his birthday and an adult Grammostola rosea ( cala at the time) for christmas.
After a few months he got into Ninja turtles and lost interest in the tarantulas and i took over thier maintenance. As you are all aware the bug takes over and i now own over 180 tarantulas, several Scorpions,
Millipedes and six colonies of Cockroaches. The rosea died last year well into her twenties, but my first tarantula "Maxie" the seemanni is still alive if a bit threadbear now

I run Invicta arachnid club of which i have been chairman for the last ten years, i spend most of my time running our IAC forum and editing the newsletter which is why it has taken so long for me join this community, although Matt Spooner our webmaster is a prolific contributer to the bts forum.

Now i have finished boring you if anyone wants a chat i look forward to talking to you.

Chris

[Mrs Linda Street]

Hi Alistair & Niall, welcome to the forum, you'll find these T's are very addictive, once started, there's no stopping lol.

[Alistair Kennington]

Middle earth

Hi buddie great name for a spider ,must addmit never thought about the tolkien
thing till i read what your rosie was named ...any way its a mega name that ,i just called my aberrans "borris/dorris" no thought what so ever

[Niall Marley]

Hey everyone, my name's Niall and I am currently living in Aberdeen, Scotland but am originally from England (something my friends never let me forget ). I bought my first tarantula (A chilean rose named Shelob - If you understand why 'Shelob' you may begin to comprehend how much of a geek I am) about two months ago and am already hoping to get another one given a reasonable amount of time. I never imagined spiders, or arachnids in general for that matter, could be so fascinating. I'm certain many people here share such a fascination

[Alistair Kennington]

Hello From Lincolnshire

Hi am new on here,from sunny sc-un-thorpe,just got my first T,its a A.Abberans 1cm sling,its great, loves little crickets,is any one else on here from near me? would like to get to no some one with more knowlidge in Ts than me....

[James Box]

roger that, Colin

lol Celeste, such a pain isn't it that the information is outdated by the time you get it!!!
sounds like fun though, gotta say i don't know as much as i'd like about Araneomorphs, but the interest is growing. there are a few on here that are absolutely mad about them though, one or two trying to get me into them more

i also know what you mean, citing old articles can be a pain, you can see why the authors don't restate everything (a simple article would end up being the size of a library lol) but sometimes hard to get hold of the information they are citing.
the internet is a boon for that, but even then you can't find everything...

anyways, welcome to the board, you'll find a wealth of knowledge here!!

[Celeste Webster]

welcome Joan, Celeste and Sam!

Celeste, more people into taxonomy is wonderful, we need as many minds working on it as possible quite interested in that Lycosid you found too! they are fantastic spiders in their own right.

Thank you James-I was inspired to come here I think because on the ATS I asked for habitat photos. I have been reading Spider books by British authors since I was young.

Learning the taxonomy is slow going- especially since I started with fifty and one hundred year old books and then found out that everything I had learned had been changed -So much for Fabre and Comstock!

Right now I am waiting with baited breath to find out what they are going to classify my beloved Not-a-Nhandu chromatus-and hopefully, undertand why!
Everyone here in the States that can is lending Brent a helping hand with the Aphonopelma project, - Missouri has already been done by a grad student a couple of years ago. -We've got one! A. hentzi's are pretty done! I finally have a computer that will let me download pdf's and read them-however, whenever I have tried to read anything current on taxonomy, it seems to mostly reference previous work to which I do not have access- or havent found yet-rather than, I suppose, restating all of the details that indicate a Genus species. My current taxonomy interest is Agelenaidae- apparently fairly recently the Genera on this side of the pond became different from those in -England?- or all of Europe?- and I would love to know the workings behind this. Agelena-Agelenopsis
(These, and the Lycosidae, are my favorite aranamorphs)I'm saving up for a membership to the Journal of Arachnology to continue my hobby studies.I suppose I am not the only artist that reads Biology for fun?

Oh, almot forgot- My Lycosid was probably a Hogna-she probably hitched a ride in the teenagers car from Southern Missouri. I never got a very satisfactory picture- I found her in the Fall of '06-she lived till spring and tried to make two egg sacs over winter but neither of them were good.

I observed that she shared a lot of behavioral patterns with tarantulas, and I think they may sometimes be mistaken for each other in this state because the dark brown Hogna -at quick, uneducated glance- bears a great deal of resemblance to a Mature Male A. hentzi.

[Mrs Linda Street]

Hi Samuel hope you enjoy the forum.

[James Box]

welcome Joan, Celeste and Sam!
Joan...i am sort of with you on B. smithi...but for a different reason lol, think Brachy's are massively overrated after all this time still don't own a smithi.
...though that trouble maker Andrew Smith has succeeded in getting me halfway interested with his fascinating dvd and lectures on them...
lol

Celeste, more people into taxonomy is wonderful, we need as many minds working on it as possible quite interested in that Lycosid you found too! they are fantastic spiders in their own right.

Sam, i'm sure you'll find that alot of us love reptiles and amphibians here too...so your pics will most likely be very welcome.
in fact i've seen pics of Chinese Water Dragons put up, and though they're kind of off topic, the mods don't seem to mind (they can always edit my post if they do lol).

I think the thread about the water dragons was "let through" by Mr. Pennell (Sir) as a one off.....primarily this is a site for Tarantulas and their Kin as he once said on another "off topic" thread .....Colin

[lynn mawdesley]

Hey Sam good to see you over here

[Matthew Baines]

Hi Sam welcome to the BTS forum

[Samuel John Kerr]

Hi all,

Ive been keeping tarantulas for about 18 months now, and thought it high time I join this forum (I've been enjoying myself on that Arachnophiles for a while under the name Samphibian, and see a lot of links to the BTS so thought i'd check it out).

I'm a student veterinary surgeon, studying in Glasgow, Scotland. Ive been keeping "exotics" for almost 3 years now, focusing mainly on amphibians (in particular frogs of the order Dendrobatidae, the Dart-frogs) but have recently started keeping invertebrates and reptiles too. One of my favourite aspects of the hobby is photography - In fact, it was keeping exotic animals and wanting to share my experiences with them that got me into photography!

Tarantula wise, i'm currently keeping:

Sub adult/juvenile (2-4"ish)

Acanthoscurria geniculata
Brachypelma albopilosum
Brachypelma angustum
Brachypelma emelia
Euathlus sp. "Red"
Grammostola sp. "Conception"
Grammostola sp. "North"
Yamia sp. "Koh Samui"

Slings

Aphonopelma iodius
Brachypelma albopilosum
Brachypelma vagans
Ceratogyrus darlingi
Cyriocosmus elegans
Cyclosternum sp. "Machalla"
Grammostola aureostriata
Psalmopoeus cambridgei
Thrixopelma pruriens
Yamia sp. "Koh Samui"

I also have a number of other odds and ends coming in the next couple of weeks, and I shall update you as appropriate.

Incidentally, I'd love to share images with you all: is IMG coding from photobucket acceptable on this forum? Mine are resized at 640x480

Incidentally, if anyone is interested Id be glad to share details of my amphibian/reptile collection too.

Look forward to spending time here,

Sam

[Mrs Linda Street]

Hi Celeste & welcome to the BTS forum.

[Celeste Webster]

HI!

I have belonged to the ATS for two years and recently decided it would be good to register here, too.

I have always been interested in spiders, but was not very interested in tarantulas nor thought of actually keeping spiders as pets until I saw the Nature special with Martin Nicholas. Thank you Mr. Nicholas!

I read everything I could find at the time at the library, and decided they were too fragile and would die in my care. 6 months later I came upon some teenagers who found a "huge spider in their car" which we all thought was a tarantula (they are native here) and took it off of their hands, came home and googled tarantula and found the ATS, who helped me identify my wolf spider, and set me up in the hobby.

I have 20 tarantulas (which is just right for me). I was raised with more biology in my early childhood training than most, so though I am an artist, I like learning everything I can and understanding the science of it-I find taxonomy fascinating.

I expect I'll read more than I post, I am trying to learn more about the habitats of where my charges are originally from.

If posting pictures here is similar to the ATS, I might do that!