THE COPPER COLORMORPH
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We don't know a lot about these tarantulas because so few people have ever actually gone to Chile to see how they live and brought back believable reports. (Great vacation idea, no? Take LOTS of pictures. You wouldn't need someone to carry your bags, would you?) What's presented here seems to fit with what is known about them, but a lot of it is conjecture, not fact. It should be taken as interim wisdom until confirmed or corrected by new data.
The scientific name for this tarantula is Grammostola rosea (Walckenaer, 1837). The "G" in "Grammostola" is always capitalized, the remainder of the word is all lower case. The second name, "rosea," is always all lower case. Both words are always either italicized or underlined if italics aren't possible. The part, "(Walckenaer, 1837)," means that this tarantula was originally described and named by a man, Baron Charles Athanase Walckenaer, in 1837. The parentheses indicate that it was originally known by a different scientific name. In fact, this species has a history of several different scientific names, causing much confusion. The name just previous to this was Phrixotrichus spatulata, for instance and was reported as such in The Tarantula Keeper's Guide, Second Edition.
While everybody has their own favourite variations for the common name, the official American Arachnological Society's Committee on Common Names name for them is "Chilean rose." Capital "Chilean," lower case "rose." The plural is "roses," not "rosies" although we have to admit that we sometimes use the latter. There is no such thing as a "rose hair" or "rosehair." Tarantulas have setae or bristles, not hair.
For the most part, immatures, males and females are coloured much alike but with the males being somewhat more vibrant. They have no distinct or distinguishing markings.
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This species is a bit unusual among tarantulas in that it occurs naturally in at least three different colour forms (sometimes also referred to as "colormorphs" or "colourmorphs"). These all possess a more or less uniform dark gray undercoat. One colour form is a more or less uniform, drab, dark gray (sometimes called "muddy" or "grubby") with at most only a sprinkling of lighter beige or pinkish hairs. Another possesses a uniformly dense, pretty, light pink outer coat. The last is a beautifully intense copper form. (See the photo at the top of this page.) The adult males of this last form are spectacular!
For a while, enthusiasts thought each colour form was a different species, even calling the copper coloured form G. cala, the Chilean flame tarantula. However, over the last several years all of the several colour forms have been reported to arise from the same eggsac, strong evidence that these are all merely variants of the same species.
A medium sized tarantula. Mature females will have a body length of up to about 7.5 centimetres (three inches) and a leg span of about fifteen centimetres (six inches). While the male's body is smaller, the leg span remains the same. Because of the numbers being exported from Chile the average size of the individuals currently found in the market is usually smaller. It is presumed that, given time and proper care, these will reach respectable sizes.
Roses come from the borders of the Atacama Desert in southern Peru and northern Chile at least as far south as Santiago. The Atacama can be one of the harshest environments on the planet. There are parts of it that have never had rain in recorded history. The temperatures there may reach 135 F (57 C) or higher in summer. They may experience light frosts in winter. We think that the areas where roses are found aren't quite so severe. They've been reported from semi-desert to scrub forest areas. Apparently their principle source of water in nature is from the food they eat and the more or less frequent fogs that drift in from the Pacific Ocean.
Roses have not been bred in captivity often enough or kept in captivity long enough for us to make anything more than a wild guess at maximum life spans. They've only been imported in any numbers since the early 1990s following the fall of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet Ugarte in March 1990. Since then they have been bred from time to time in captivity, but hardly enough to be called "commonly," and the resulting offspring have not yet had enough time to mature and die of old age.
As an educated guess we can bracket the probable limits of their life spans at more than ten years and less than 100 years. Reasonable guesses might be twenty to forty years. Beyond that, all bets are off.
Being desert animals, one might assume that these tarantulas require excessively high temperatures. Not so. They're extremely sturdy and resilient creatures and will do quite well at normal room temperatures. For the most part, unless you have antifreeze for blood, any temperature at which you're comfortable will suit your Chilean rose just fine. If you have a choice, 74 to 85 F (23 to 29 C) is ideal, but you needn't make heroic efforts to achieve these.
Be careful about trying to artificially raise the cage's temperature in the belief that the Chilean roses need higher temperatures. There are two problems with supplying extra heat to a tarantula's cage. First, without a major engineering effort the heat is largely uncontrollable. If you happen to experience a particularly hot day and accidentally leave the cage heater on, you could easily come home to a strong smell of well cooked tarantula.
Second, artificial heat sources are strong desiccators. They dry the cage out extremely rapidly and to a very harsh degree. Roses are accustomed to living in a desert, but even they have limits to what they can tolerate.
The bottom line here is that almost always a lower temperature is better than an artificial heat source unless you can engineer a fool proof, fail safe heater. Be extremely careful. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!
NO SUNLIGHT! In fact, avoid all bright lights, but make sure that the tarantula can easily tell the difference between day and night. (See below.)
How Can Others Get Away With Using Garden Soil?In spite of our warning many enthusiasts use garden soil, and the vast majority of them do so successfully. We presume this to be possible because "modern" environmenticides are not released to the public unless they have restrictive half lives in nature and had decomposed into less harmful substances before the soil was used for tarantula keeping. However, there is still no guarantee that a "benevolent" neighbour hasn't recently sprayed your yard with herbicides or insecticides without telling you, or your yard isn't a small chemical waste dump left over from environmenticide abuse in the 1960s. If you choose to ignore our warning, you do so at your tarantula's peril! |
Substrate is the "bedding" used on the floor of a tarantula's cage to ease the harshness of a smooth, hard cage bottom. Historically, many different substrates have been tried. Most were abysmal failures. A few worked moderately well but were supplanted by better ones. A very few have proven to be very good and are generally accepted by the hobby as more or less defacto standards. So far, none are perfect, however. We list a few here.
Aquarium sand/gravel is generally frowned on by the tarantula keeping community although we have kept many species for long periods of time on it with few or no problems. The most telling argument is that it's too abrasive. In defence of aquarium gravel it must be pointed out that tarantulas customarily live in soil that may have a large admixture of gravel of all qualities in it, and these tarantulas seem to do quite well in spite of it. We suspect that the bias against aquarium gravel is merely just that: a bias. In fact it probably seldom makes a difference. Only use the aquarium gravel that is rounded and well worn. Never use the aquarium gravel manufactured from crushed rock because of the sharp points and edges.
Garden soil, on the other hand, is a strict no-no. There is too great a possibility that it may contain a heavy load of environmenticides from your and your neighbours' finest efforts to control bugs and weeds. The bugs and weeds have had generations to develop resistances to them. The tarantula hasn't. You risk the life of your spider.
Potting soil, once the mainstay of substrates, has now fallen into disfavour because manufacturers are now either adulterating it with composted wood byproducts, or making it wholly from composted wood byproducts. Because there is no way of knowing what type of wood is used, and based on the fact that some types of wood are known to be harmful to arachnids (red cedar/juniper being the primary culprit, but many other coniferous woods are also suspect), we strongly recommend against using any brand of potting soil.
Vermiculite was once quite popular and it still has its adherents. We do not recommend it here because the tarantulas do not seem to like it very much and better substrates are available.
As of this writing, the most commonly used substrates are horticultural peat and shredded coconut husk and the debate rages on endlessly over which is better. Both have their advantages and their disadvantages. Both work well and the newbie is strongly advised to use only one or the other of these two until at least a full year's experience has been gained in caring for the tarantula. As you read this, your goal should be to learn how to properly care for your pet. Leave the experimenting to those who have the experience to properly assess the results.
Horticultural peat is available in smaller packages from houseplant and garden departments in department stores, and in larger packages and bails from commercial landscaping, gardening and horticulture suppliers. Alternate names for it are black peat, brown peat, and peat moss (although "peat moss" is also sometimes used for dried sphagnum moss).
When eventually tamped into a solid pad on the cage bottom, peat will occupy only about half the volume it does as it comes out of the package. Therefore, start out with at least twice as much as you might otherwise think you'll need. Add about 1 quart (1 litre) of room temperature tap water per 4 quarts (4 litres) of peat. Mix it well. Grab a handful and squeeze it as hard as you can. When you open your hand, if the peat retains the shape of the inside of your fist quite well, you're about finished. If it easily falls apart, add a little more water, mix and test again. If it's so wet that you can squeeze water out, mix in more dry peat. Don't become pathologically obsessed with the amount of moisture in the peat, there's a wide margin for error and it's all going to dry up in a few days anyway.
If the peat comes from the package in large or hard and unmanageable lumps, or seems to have an excess of sticks or other detritus mixed in, you should make some effort to sift it before adding any water. If the lumps are too hard you may have to add a little water first and let it stand for several hours before sifting it. On a small scale you can use an inexpensive French fry basket as a sieve. On a larger scale you can make a wooden framed sifter suspended from a ceiling joist in a garage or basement. Use one-half inch galvanized hardware cloth (sometimes incorrectly called "chicken wire") for the screen.
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Now pack the peat into a pad on the bottom of the tarantula's cage. Pack it quite solidly. In the end you want a pad that's about 3 centimetres (an inch or slightly more) thick. Install a water dish with the obligatory rock or slate chip and add one tarantula. Don't try to feed it for several days or a week to give it a chance to get used to its new home before it's stampeded by a herd of wild crickets.
Shredded coconut husk is available under a variety of trade names from most pet shops in the form of dried, compressed bricks, and from many landscaping, gardening and horticulture centres in the form of bails of dried, compressed pellets. It is also sometimes called "coir," variously pronounced "kwar" or "choir" in the hobby.
Processing the shredded coconut husk is often a bit problematical the first time you do it. Do not let this discourage you. As you process it, compressed, shredded coconut husk will increase in volume by a factor of six to eight times its original, compressed volume. If you are using a compressed brick you can cut off a piece of appropriate size with a small handsaw. If you're using the pellets, merely select a mass of pellets of adequate volume. It is better to process a little more than you'll need than to process too little. Be generous. Any unused, expanded shredded coconut husk can be dried out and stored until the next time you clean cages.
The next step is to soak the lump or pellets of shredded coconut husk in room temperature or slightly warmer tap water. Use three to four times the coconut husk's volume in water and allow it to soak several hours. If you use a lot of water it will expand and loosen relatively quickly, but you'll then have to wring out the excess water before using it. To do this use a piece of soft fabric (NOT a terrycloth towel because the shredded coconut husk becomes inextricably mixed with the nap of the towel) spread out on some flat surface that won't be harmed by the discoloured water (e.g., a table or the floor). Using whatever means is available, strain or lift portions of shredded coconut husk onto the cloth. Then roll the cloth into a long roll with several layers of cloth around it and twist it carefully to wring out the excess water. The first time you do this plan on a big mess, perhaps working outdoors or in a garage. After you master the technique a bathtub will suffice.
If you ever manage to dump shredded coconut husk into household drains be very certain to flush it for a long time through the system with huge amounts of water to make sure it clears the drains. Otherwise you may have to hire a plumber to unstop or even replace the drain pipes in your home!
If you use less water, perhaps half as much, you may not have to wring out the excess, but the soaking time will be extended to overnight or the better part of a day.
There is seldom if ever any need to sift shredded coconut husk. Once the shredded coconut husk has been expanded, and possibly any lumps worked out, it may be put into the cage, tamped as densely as practical, and the cage set up as with peat.
The moisture will evaporate from peat in a few days. This is good. Roses are desert creatures and excessive humidity is not appreciated. They will learn to get all the moisture they need from the water dish. They'll also get a lot from their food. Don't even think of misting them with a plant sprayer as some people do. This only annoys the tarantula.
Some enthusiasts report that shredded coconut husk does not dry out effectively. The top layer dries out, but the bottom layers may remain damp for extended periods of time. This always raises the possibility of vermin, fungal and bacterial outbreaks. And, forcing your Chilean rose, a desert tarantula, to live on damp substrate is a lot like making you sleep in a wet bed.
The solution to the problem is to merely remove most of the shredded coconut husk and spread it over a wide surface to allow it to dry. Once it is completely dry it can be returned to the tarantula's cage. In future, prepare the shredded coconut husk in advance of cage cleaning, giving it time to dry. Additionally, using a thinner layer of substrate may help to avoid the issue.
There are at least two possible reasons for this. First, you must realize that in nature the tarantula's world is almost always vertical. Burrowing species most commonly live in a vertically oriented burrow and the arboreal species live in trees. Flat and horizontal is an alien environment to them. But, when we get them as pets, we immediately place them in a cage with a flat and horizontal floor like hamsters, and wonder why they aren't happy. But, they're resilient creatures with a built-in ability to adapt, and they soon come to terms with OUR little idiosyncrasies.
The other reason might be because it doesn't like the substrate. Either it isn't familiar with the substrate you're using and doesn't know what to do about it, or it doesn't like the moisture. Normally, it'll get over its little snit in a week or so (or when the substrate finally dries out) and return to earth for food and water. If it still hates the substrate it may cover it with a thick layer of silk.
If, after a couple weeks, it's still hanging from the cage walls you should probably change to one of the other substrates. Even then, it may take a few additional days to get over its little hissy fit. Be patient with your tarantula.
Chilean roses pose a special problem. If they weren't so hardy they'd make lousy pets. The problem is this: They evolved in the southern hemisphere and their seasons are reversed to ours. (Here I'm assuming that you live in the northern hemisphere as the majority of tarantula keepers do.) And, they seem to have a particularly hard time adjusting to northern hemisphere timetables.
Think of it this way. In the Atacama they experience seasonal fluctuations in temperature, water/humidity availability, day length, and food availability. They use one, some or all of these to entrain their annual cycles, to synchronize their lives with the rest of Mother Nature. Their species evolved in this absolutely predictable waltz of variations. Each individual tarantula has grown up in these conditions.
Then somebody unceremoniously snatches them out their lair and ships them to the other side of the planet. Worse yet, we keep them in a house with thermostatically controlled heat. There goes any temperature clues to let them readjust to the new time table.
We get up and turn the lights on every morning at 6:30 or 7:00 AM and the house is well lit until we turn the lights off at 10:30 or 11:00 PM. And this never changes regardless of what season of the year it is. We've just removed day length as a clue.
Worse yet, in nature they're preprogrammed to eat as much food as available in preparation for the coming famine season. (And, there's ALWAYS a coming season of famine!) During the famine season they may go hungry for several months before food becomes plentiful again, another seasonal clue. Further, from time to time there may be a year of drought. In these years the "fat" season never arrives. Any creatures that are to survive must be able to endure a very long season of famine, a year or more.
In captivity we give them all the food they'll eat and, out of instinct, they eat everything that we throw at them. We overfeed them thinking that they're starved and they don't stop eating until they're obese. Even then the food STILL keeps coming. There is no string of light meals followed by a few months of fasting. This destroys any food availability clues completely.
Lastly, in the Atacama, as dry as it is, there are dry seasons and damp seasons. It may not rain often, but from time to time fog banks roll in from the Pacific Ocean and generally moisten everything for a few hours to several days. And, this tends to happen seasonally. The rose's cage in your home its always kept bone dry as a means of vermin control, but you always keep a dish of water in the cage. Oops! There goes another clue.
The result is that this species more than almost any other becomes quite confused about what season of the year it is. Because we've removed all their clues they don't know when to start eating again once they get too fat and stop. Neither do they know when it should be time to molt. They may go 2 years or more without eating or molting, before they finally pick up the few very subtle clues available to synchronize with the local seasons.
If this happens to your rose you should try to supply the missing clues. Keep it in a warm place in summer and a cool place in winter. Try to keep it in a room where artificial lighting isn't used very much so it can see a normal change in day length. Don't feed it all it will eat when you get it. Two or three crickets all at once, repeated ONLY every 2 weeks (to a total of only about six crickets a month) is more than enough. If it stops eating for an extended period of time, don't worry. Offer it only one cricket every 2 or 3 weeks in the evening. If it doesn't eat it by the next morning, remove the cricket and try again two or three weeks later. When it does begin to eat again, give your rose ONLY two or three crickets every two weeks (to a total of only six per month) regardless of how hungry you think it might be.
Handling is the other subject that incites riots among tarantula keepers. Should you or shouldn't you? When should you? When shouldn't you? Which ones can be handled? Which can't? What's the best way to handle them? What methods should be avoided? And it goes on and on and on...
The subject is far to complex to cover here. Read the entries on this subject in The Tarantula Keeper's Guide, now in its third edition, for an in-depth discussion of handling and the "dos" and the "don'ts."
About 1 out of every 1,000 roses bites and the bite causes swelling and intense pain for several hours to a day. Nobody has yet lost life or limb over such a bite, however. If your rose begins to rear back and raises its front legs in a threatening posture as you try to pick her up, maybe you should label it a look-but-don't-touch pet or take it back to the pet shop for another one. The other 999 out of 1,000 will make perfect hand pets if you follow the basic rules.
For a long time enthusiasts were puzzled by roses' apparently unwillingness to burrow in a cage. It was thought that they might be vagabonds in nature, seldom if ever actually living in a formal burrow. However, recently Dr. G. B. Edwards (Curator: Arachnida & Myriapoda Florida State Collection of Arthropods, FDACS, Division of Plant Industry) on a trip to Santiago Chile, examined Chilean rose tarantulas in large numbers living in burrows some 45 centimetres (18 inches) deep. Now we know: Their apparent reluctance to dig a burrow in captivity is apparently an artifact of that captivity, not a "natural" life style.
The general experience in the hobby is that they neither require a burrow nor use one. When given the chance we've seen them use a coconut shell as a place to hide, but all of ours have firmly rejected burrows when they have been offered. This is supported by the experience of many other keepers. Installing a coconut shell or a plastic aquarium plant that drapes over to produce a darkened cave-like space might be appreciated, however. It may decide that's a good place to hide. Otherwise, don't worry about it.
However, if your Chilean rose does begin a major earth moving project in its cage, perhaps it would appreciate deeper substrate so it can construct a burrow. The subject of burrowing tarantulas is far too large and involved to be covered here, however. Consult The Tarantula Keeper's Guide, Third Edition for a thorough discussion of the subject with instructions.
We strongly recommend that you read a good book on tarantulas. You can get copies of the The Tarantula Keeper's Guide, Third Edition, mentioned above, Sam Marshall's Tarantulas and Other Arachnids (both rated quite highly by the American Tarantula Society), Dr. R. G. Breene's Quick and Easy Tarantula Care (remarkably good in spite of its small size and modest price) and several others at your local public library for free.
If you like them you can get your own copies "off the shelf" from perhaps one-third or more of the pet shops in your area. Most can get them for you by special order if they're out of stock. In addition, these books are available by special order from every bookstore (the larger stores may even have copies in stock), sometimes directly from the publisher (Barron's Educational Series) and from any of the Internet based bookstores like (listed in alphabetical order) Abe Books, Alibris, Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com and BooksPrice.com.
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This page was initially created on 2003-February-15.
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