if anyone else has already posted about this, i haven’t seen it. so if i’m repeating stuff that’s already been said, whups.
just as a wee side note to the article about bugs being able to survive falls from great heights… if a tarantula falls greater than 3 feet, start notifying the next of 'chid (yeah, i know that was a stretch). arboreal tarantulas can survive a slightly higher fall, but even that’s pushing it.
when a tarantula falls from such a height, as it lands it will, more often than not, get a crack or rupture in it’s large abdomen; the larger the abdomen, the more likely it’s going to rupture. when that happens, the tarantula will die from any number of things: infection, dehydration, or blood loss.
however… a while back (perhaps about two months), in the fringe news section of cnn.com, there was a story of some school kids who’d saved their class tarantula after it fell from about child-waist level; it had ruptured it’s abdomen, but they used superglue to patch up the hole, and managed to make a full recovery.
Are tarantulas really bugs? I thought bugs had six legs and were members of the class Insecta, distinguished by their three body parts: (1) the head, which bears the mouthparts, eyes, and a pair of antennae, (2) the thorax, which usually has three pairs of legs (hence “Hexapoda,” the name that was formerly given to this class) and usually one or two pairs of wings, and (3) the many-segmented abdomen, which contains the digestive, excretory, and reproductive organs. (Thank you Encyclopædia Britannica.)
I’m not surprised that a tarantula would be injured by a fall, they seem to have a much higher “mass:surface area ratio” than your average bug.
Ok, first there’s the colloquial definition: A bug is any terrestrial arthropod, or, in some cases, any terrestrial invertebrate (earthworms and slugs might qualify, for instance). By this definition, tarantulas are bugs. The more technical definition is that a bug is a member of a particular order of insects, characterized by forewings which form a hard covering for the hindwings, as in a beetle, but in which the two wings do not meet in a smooth line down the back, but rather form a sort of “X” shape. I’ve never heard “bug” used to refer to all insects but only insects.
heh. when i read the original thingie about falling bugs, i coulda sworn that spiders were mentioned towards the end of it. i was bored and feeling an irrational urge to share some info, hence my post. and yeah, i prolly shouldn’t have titled my post “falling bugs”, but well, call it a brain fart. grin
having my very own Brachypelma albopilosa (curly hair tarantula), i have a special fondness for discussion of such a topic. while i don’t claim to know everything 'bout 'em, i do enjoy discussing them.
my lil pet’s doing swank. it’s name is Skeið (pronounced like “scathe” - it’s an icelandic word that means “spoon”). i call it “it” because frankly, i don’t know if it’s male or female. i hope it’s female because male tarantulas only tend to live between 1.5-2 years. females can live up to 15.
it hides mostly during the day, but comes out at night, which makes it kinda hard to get a picture of it. but as soon as i do, i plan on scanning it in and being a boastful sorta-parent.
Well, now I’m feeling bad because I made Arnold feel bad. Arnold, don’t feel bad! Yes, you’re right, there is an order of insects, Hemiptera spp., known as “true bugs” to distinguish them from other insects known as “bugs”. You are also correct that in colloquial usage, yes, a “bug” generally means a SMALL crawling invertebrate.
Large crawling invertebrates, such as tarantulas, are usually entitled to the modifier “big”, or alternatively, “big f**king”.
Probably at least 900 of those five-year-olds would have added, “–a BIG bug!” to their response.
And now I have to correct MYSELF–a “nit” is not in fact a bug, technically a nit is the egg of a bug. Oopsie!
I would like to pose a question to Cecil: if you dropped a tarantula and a June bug off the Empire State Building, which one would hit the ground first? (answer below)
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Hah! It’s a trick question. June bugs can fly, so it would just fly away. (note to you scientific types–that’s a Phyllophaga spp.)
The article didn’t mention anything about the ability of bugs to fly being taken into the equation, but I just assumed that whoever was motivated enough to drop bugs out of a 6-floor window in the interest of science would know enough not to try it with June bugs, fireflies, etc. (or at least they’d figure it out pretty quick).
