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CHILEAN ROSE-HAIRED TARANTULA
SCIENTIFIC NAME: Grammostola rosea
HOUSE NAME: "Rosy"
HABITAT: Mostly deserts and scrubland of Bolivia, Northern Chile, and Argentina.
CONSERVATION STATUS: Least Concern
FUN FACT: Rose-haired tarantulas, like many other tarantulas, use their hairs as a defense. These hairs have microscopic barbs that can be irritating or painful when in contact with skin or eyes. The spider can ‘fling’ the hairs with their legs if they are threatened.
FUN FACT: Tarantulas catch their prey with speed, not webbing. They eat almost anything they can grasp with their pedipalps. Their primary prey includes small insects (grasshoppers, beetles, sow bugs, cockroaches, crickets, and other spiders), small lizards, scorpions, and an occasional small bird or rodent. Prey is caught with the jaws and then venom is injected into the prey. The internal organs of the prey are liquefied by the venom and then “sucked up” by the tarantula’s specialized mouth parts.
DESCRIPTION: Spiders have two body sections of the body, the cephalothorax and the abdomen. The cephalothorax is the section with the mouth, eight eyes, and where all the legs attach. The top portion of the cephalothorax is called the carapace. The abdomen is the rear portion of a spider’s body and has the spinnerets. Colors of the carapace exoskeleton range from dark brown to light pink in color. The hairs are reddish orange to pink. Leg span can be 3 to 6 inches. Spiders have 8 legs and 2 pedipalps. They also have 8 eyes but cannot see very well.
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