Mating Megahexura fulva, Tawny Dwarf Tarantula tinyfi

These interesting spiders are not true tarantulas (family Theraphosidae), but are somewhat closely related in the family Mecicobothriidae. They share many characteristics of true tarantulas, like the vertically working fangs, two pair of book lungs, restricted range of silk production, and to a limited degree are sort of hairy and spiny like tarantulas. They differ from true tarantulas in a lack of scopulae (sticky pads on the feet) and claw tufts, both of which Theraphosidae possesses. Another interesting difference, though not exactly diagnostic, is that mature male M. fulva do not develop mating hooks on their first pair of legs, as most true tarantulas do.

My adults are around 15mm in body length and around 2-2.2cm diagonal leg span, though they are described to get up to 18mm in bodylength. I have seen immature specimens that are around 5mm BL and i suspect the freshly hatched babies are even smaller still. These spiders tend to live under rocks and spin webs fairly similar to Agelenidae grass spiders and are often found living in the exact same areas and habitats as the grass spiders. I personally collected a wide range of maturity levels in the same area at the same time, indicating these spiders almost certainly live for more than one year. The particular spiders in this video were collected late November, 2009.

The male seems to have a bit of trouble maneuvering the female in this video. I suspect this was due at least in part to the "open air" mating i sort of forced them into. In nature i expect the males mate with the females fairly deep in her burrow and thus would have walls and a ceiling to lever off of, facilitating getting the female into the correct position for inserting their sperm charged pedipalp tips into her reproductive opening.

Notes about this movie:
1) SORRY i didn't have the initial contacts in center frame (or even on frame) the whole time. I though the male was exhibiting aggression and not mating behavior and was getting ready to separate them with a rolled up piece of papertowel.

2) Nubi is my cat (short of Anubis, Lord of Venom) and for parts of the movie he was running around my room like a little maniac

3) The whole mating took about one hour and ten minutes to one hour and twenty minutes but i didn't film all of it and obviously didn't show all of it here. The vast majority of the time the spiders were seeming to hold perfectly still, so i tried to edit to just show the good parts. When you see a still picture with a +X minutes that is to show how much time i edited out.

To read more about these spiders check out: http://scabies.myfreeforum.org/Catching_Megahexura_fulva_One_of_CA_s_smallest...

[uploaded from a 17MB WMV file]

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• Mating
• Megahexura
• fulva
• California
• Tawny
• Dwarf
• Tarantula
• spider
• mygalomorph
• mygalomorphae
• breeding

[Shaunnahatesyou]

They are cute. :] Are they nice spiders?

[cacoseraph]

@Shaunnahatesyou hmm. aside from the males being a little sadistic towards the females... i suppose they are. i am very fond of them. i am working on documenting them, both in captivity and in nature for the next few years at least :)

thanks for watching. i really appreciate all your great comments. no "loook at teh long finger nales" from you =P

[Shaunnahatesyou]

@cacoseraph Hahaha. :D Sadistic, eh? I can not wait for more videos. Would you think I am weird if I said I liked your nails? O.o;

[cacoseraph]

@Shaunnahatesyou well, the male seems a bit more aggressive than i am used to from the tarantulas i have seen. i have read similar ~reactions from some of the workers that have written scientific papers about similar cousin species

hey, 500 ppl on here have commented that they hate them. nice to have someone like them :) they are all relatively short, right now, though. bug adventuring is hard on them

thanks for the comment :)

[Shaunnahatesyou]

@cacoseraph Hahaha. I understand. Usually I have really long nails... D; But once I got my snake I had to cut them. I feared I would hurt him with them. Oh well.

[cacoseraph]

@Shaunnahatesyou the sort of irony is i hurt more animals with short nails. i use my claws to pick up TINY little bugs with no harm to them. just yesterday i killed one of the only orange pill bugs i have ever found... if i had my nails it would have been fine :/

[cacoseraph]

@SLIMGOD7 to limit the amount of vibration and carbon dioxide i introduce into the mix