Heritage Park Zoo

Creepy crawlers: Tarantula exhibit at Prescott zoo may get more legs this spring

Matt Hinshaw/The Daily Courier

Heritage Park Zoological Sanctuary is currently rebuilding and expanding its tarantula collection and exhibit. It currently has more than 20 tarantulas.

Prescott 03-23-12

Matt Hinshaw/The Daily Courier

Curtis Harkrader, a zookeeper at Heritage Park Zoological Sanctuary, holds a Mexican Red Rump tarantula Friday afternoon in Prescott.

Did you know?

• Spiders aren't insects. Insects have three body segments and six legs. Spiders have two body segments and eight legs. Spiders are arachnids, a group that includes scorpions, ticks and mites, among others.

• All spiders are venomous, produce silk and move via hydraulics. Few are dangerous to healthy adults.

• Tarantulas lay on their backs to molt as they grow or recover from illness or injury, and can re-grow lost limbs between molts.

• Despite its common name, the Goliath bird-eater tarantula, Theraphosa blondi, doesn't eat birds on a regular basis.

• During the Middle Ages in southern Italy, there was a condition attributed to spider bites, "tarantism," which supposedly caused people to dance. This was a convenient excuse to boogie down without fear of the then-expected Spanish Inquisition, and became the basis of the tarantella.

Sources: American Tarantula Society, "Biology of Spiders" by Rainer F. Foelix, Heritage Park Zoological Sanctuary and others.

Nicholas DeMarino
The Daily Courier

PRESCOTT - It's a quiet Wednesday afternoon in the Tarantula Grotto at Prescott Heritage Park Zoological Sanctuary.

The staging area behind the display tanks was 60 degrees with a balmy 51 percent humidity. Cricket chatter was occasionally interrupted by a protesting humidifier that also sounded like cricket chatter.

"Mom - oh my God," yelled a boy charging into the front of the faux cave. "Holy cow - Mom - you're kidding."

Wayne Fischer, the zoo's animal care manager, flipped off the back-room fluorescents, and the traffic-yellow bulbs atop the tanks rose to miniature sun stature.

It's hard to tell what's happening from behind the displays, which were covered in black film to retain the cave décor on the opposite side. The boy cursed and a woman shh-ed him.

"Did he say what I think he said?" Fischer whispered, his brow furrowed but his grin betraying amusement.

"But, Mom, look," the boy said, still yelling. "Look."

He pointed at an army of orange-head cockroaches, not one of the eight spiders for which the enclosure was named, nor the emperor scorpion, a fellow arachnid ambassador.

"That's still cool. That's what you want from a place like this," Fischer said later. "Granted, a salamander or a fish isn't going to do that, but maybe a dart frog or a centipede would. If there are going to be changes, I don't want to take away from that effect."

It's spring-cleaning time at the zoo, and the tarantulas may get some new neighbors.

A hairy predicament

Between November and December, three of the Prescott zoo's 22 tarantulas died.

One was the collection's most charismatic specimen, a Goliath bird-eater (Theraphosa blondi) - the world's largest or second-largest spider, depending on the reference book.

"A lot of the tarantulas were adults when the grotto was built in the late '90s, and they're nearing the end of their natural lifespans," said Fischer, who was as a zookeeper from 2003-07. "We're not going to downsize what we have now, but we're going to look at maybe getting some more colorful ones, and maybe another bird-eater."

Since he took over last year, Fischer has focused on reptile house renovations, which are largely finished.

Currently, nine of the 20 Tarantula Grotto displays are empty and may soon incubate an amphibian collection or non-tarantula arachnids or other beasties.

"I love tarantulas, but to a guest, a lot of them are just different shades of brown," Fischer said. "You come in, and it's tarantula, tarantula, cool, tarantula, tarantula-tarantula-tarantula-tarantula, tarantula."

If you can separate native from exotic and terrestrial from arboreal among the zoo's tarantula inventory, you're probably in the minority:

• Chilean rose (Grammostola rosea),

• Desert blond (Aphonopelma chalcodes),

• Mexican red rump (Brachypelma vegans).

• Orange baboon (Pterinochilus murinus),

• Sri Lankan ornamental (Poecilotheria fasciata), and

• Trinidad chevron (Psalmopoeus cambridgei).

Despite their proliferation as pets, tarantulas aren't easy to keep.

"Some of these spiders are from South America, and other ones are from the desert, so it's hard to find a climate medium," Fischer said. "I'd like to have someone in here an hour a day just on maintenance. That may or may not sound like a lot but, enrichment time aside, it takes 20 minutes to feed the tiger and clean the cage every day."

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Spiders get a bad rap, and tarantulas in particular.

"One of the first things I tell people is that they're not deadly, that there are no verifiable records of anyone dying from a tarantula bite," said Wade Harrell, president of the American Tarantula Society, an educational nonprofit.

All spiders have venom. The infamous black widow and brown recluse spiders can cause serious illness, but most tarantulas aren't in the same ballpark when it comes to poison.

"If you exhibit them to the public, you can use that fear to educate people, though," said Harrell, whose group has its 14th annual conference July 19-22 in Tucson. "It's like with sharks or snakes. People are scared of them, but they're also interested."

About 30 tarantula species call Arizona home. Arachnid taxonomy is struggling to find eight-legged footing in the wake of emerging DNA studies, but, regardless, this is tarantula country.

"You usually only see them after the monsoon rains in the summer and in the evening, and that's pretty much the males," said Jeff Schalau, an agricultural agent with the University of Arizona's Yavapai County cooperative extension office. "They may be kind of scary-looking, but they're fairly docile creatures and really interesting."

Point in case: If it a tarantula is scared or miffed, it may rear up on its hind legs, bare its fangs, then fling hairs at a potential foe. These hairs are a severe irritant and, according to multiple scientists, make for a memorable, albeit unpleasant, experience.

Tarantulas aren't out and about much, though. Most local varieties rarely venture more than a few feet from their desert burrows.

The Heritage Park Zoological Sanctuary has cutaway burrow structures to help patrons see the tarantulas in more natural settings, but they're not without their faults and were discontinued years ago.

"The ones we have were made a long time ago and are really heavy. We had beautiful cobalt blue tarantulas before, but they'd cover the entire burrow with webbing and you couldn't see them," Fischer said. "Maybe we'll get some of the newer-style tarantula burrows. That might be nice for them."

That applies to patrons, too, but he's concerned about the spiders.

Call 778-4242 or 877-778-6008, or visit www.heritageparkzoo.org to find out more about the Heritage Park Zoological Sanctuary, located at 1403 Heritage Park Road in Prescott.

Source:

http://www.prescottaz.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=104679&SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1086&S=1