[caption id="attachment_3624" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Can't Believe. It's a Blue Tarantula!!"]
[/caption]Yes there are Tarantulas in Costa Rica! But are they dangerous? I have always been told, when inquiring, that Tarantulas found in Costa Rica are not deadly but if they happen to bite you, "0uch!" The experience results in a great deal of pain. Also if they urinate on you, it will cause extreme irritatioin of the skin.
Tarantulas of different sizes live in Costa Rica, some live in banana plants, others live in holes in the earth. I saw one in Monteverde Cloud Forest Reserve which was around 3 inches in diameter, and it lived in a large black hole in the earth. And you can bet I did not get close to it!
I lived in Cariari neighborhood near the international airport in Costa Rica and a tarantula, about one inches in diameter, lived in a hole in the grasses in my backyard. The Tarantula crept into my kitchen around 8 pm to munch of the crumbs I had dropped on the floor. I scooped him up and returned him to the grass but he kept coming back each night. My young son was visiting and offered advice as to how to remedy the Tarantula visits such as keeping the kitchen floor spotless. But this did not stop the visits. Finally I put him in my dust pan, then walked two blocks from my house and put him in the grasses there. No more Tarantula visits.
I am very afraid of spiders, especially Tarantulas. Guess it's because they are big and hairy. As a child I had nightmares about spiders. So living in the land of Tarantulas was to say the least a little frightening.
I read a story in the NY Times Travel section about a guy who had a pet Tarantula, which he thought was fun and not the least bit aggressive. Well, he was cleaning the spider's cage one day and I suppose the Tarantula had rather been left to rest. The Tarantula scratched his stomach and hundreds of tiny hairs sprayed all around, some going into the owners eye. And to the hospital he went, requiring surgery to cleanse the eye of these tiny hairs.
I have never heard of a cobalt blue Tarantula in Costa Rica, but that does not mean that there is not one in Costa Rica!! After all isn't everything in the tropics is very colorful?
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Hi, I came upon your blog because I'm a tarantula collector who's also making a trip to Costa Rica soon. I liked your post and thought you might be interested in more tarantula info.
ReplyDeleteThere are a good many species of tarantula that live in Costa Rica. Many of them are quite pretty (from a tarantula person's point of view) and, as "New World" tarantulas, are fairly docile. Species in Costa Rica include the Costa Rican Zebra (A. seemani), Costa Rican Tiger Rump (C. fasciata), and the Pinktoe (A. avicularia), which are arboreal tarantulas, likely the ones you've heard are found in banana plants. Pinktoes are actually extremely docile, compared to some other tarantulas (though they still should not necessarily be handled in the wild by inexperienced people). You can Google pictures of them if you like.
You are correct that no tarantulas are deadly- no one in recorded history has ever died from a tarantula's venom. Depending on the species, various levels of pain can be experienced from a "wet" (with venom- tarantulas don't alway inject venom when they bite) bite, ranging from a little worse than a bee sting (localized swelling and numbness) to serious muscle spasms, sweating and heart palpitations.
Tarantulas don't urinate, though. Their biology requires them to conserve as much water as they can since they rarely drink and often go weeks without eating- other insects, very, very small animals, where they also get much of their water. For waste, they expel a guanine-based material that comes out looking like a white paste. It's basically white, pasty poop with a very small amount of water mixed in. They only do this rarely- again, conserving their resources. As far as I can tell, tarantula poop doesn't irritate the skin at all.
Similarly, since they only eat other creatures (except for on the rarest of occasions when tarantula keepers have reported them eating something like a grape), which they detect as prey via vibrations (tarantulas' eyes don't see images, only the presence or absence of light) it is unlikely the tarantula was going after crumbs in your home. It is possible it was coming inside to get warmer. There is also a possibility that your tarantula was a mature male, since they rarely leave their homes- they're not big wanderers, except for mature males- however, if the spider was only an inch across, this is unlikely.
"New World" tarantulas do flick hairs, as you saw in the NYT article. I had a similar experience to that man when I touched my eye after working with my tarantulas and got a urticating hair in it, though I did not need surgery. However, that New World tarantulas flick hairs also makes them more docile, as flicking is their first line of defense- when they feel threatened, they don't have to resort to biting as their only option.
Lastly, unfortunately, the Cobalt Blue Tarantula (H. lividum) doesn't live in the Americas, but in southeast Asia. They are beautiful in the correct lighting and also plentiful in the tarantula hobby. They are not handleable, though- definitely one of the meaner species of tarantula. They are an "Old World" species and don't have urticating hairs. They also rarely seen by their owners because they are what's called an "obligate burrower"- they spend almost all of their time in their burrow.
If you ever wanted to keep a tarantula as a pet, look for something in the Brachypelma or Grammostola genus. They are docile, easy to maintain and often quite beautiful.
Thanks for the post! I'm really looking forward to our Costa Rica trip.