Tarantulas How long tarantulas live and their behavior are very interesting. Their not like just any spider. Female tarantulas can live thirty years or longer in the wild. Even in captivity, they have been known to live for over twenty years. Although on the other hand, males have a life span of just five to ten years on average. Now tarantulas do come in many sizes. The largest tarantulas have a leg span of nearly ten inches, or about the size of a dinner plate. This does however depend on the size of your dinner plate. Tarantulas are docile(ready to accept control or instructions) and rarely bite people. Tarantulas only attack when they feel threatened. However when they are threatened, they defend themselves by throwing needle like barbed hairs at their attackers. Tarantulas can feel threatened simply by being touched the wrong way or being held the wrong way by a human. They use their hind legs to scrape barbed hairs from its abdomen and flings them in the direction of the threat. …show more content…
Although this also may sound like a good way to get food, it’s not. Tarantulas ambush small prey at night, stealthily sneaking up on a potential meal and then pouncing. Tarantulas paralyze their prey with venom, then use digestive enzymes to turn the meal into a soupy liquid. Tarantulas will eat anything small enough to catch and consume. They will eat things things such as: arthropods, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and even small mammals. They will even eat other tarantulas, if given the