If you suffer from arachnophobia, stay away from the southern United States for a while. Why? Because much of the southwest, especially southern Colorado, is about to be inundated in swarms of tarantulas.
Every year, swarms of Texas brown tarantulas (Aphonopelma hentzi) take advantage of the cooling temperature across the southern US to look for a mate. And 2024 shouldn't be much different, experts predict.
The fist-sized arachnids are commonly found across Texas and through New Mexico, with populations in Arizona's Sonoran desert.
Yet it's places like Colorado where the spiders really make their presence known.
Not that most people typically notice – curiously shy for an animal with such a fearsome reputation, they typically chill close to the ground in heavily sheltered spots, hunkering down in abandoned burrows by day only to emerge at night to dine on an insect or two or perhaps a small rodent.
It all makes you wonder why; but as it happens, we can spin the tale of the tarantula invasion. You could, of course, look this up on the web, but why, when we've already brought you the information here — without any bugs?
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Back to the tarantulas. The reason for the big gathering, as is the reason for so many such gatherings of creatures, great and small, is simple, and I'm here to spin the tale for you. In a word: breeding.
That all changes from late August to October. Driven by deeper urges, male tarantulas rise from the shadows and brave the open ground to seek attention from any willing and able female … who presumably do the tarantula-equivalent of swiping left and right as they search for the perfect mandibles to cozy up to. Or consume, whatever the vibe happens to be that night.
It's nothing short of a busy time for the happy arachnids, with males covering up to roughly a kilometer (just over half a mile) to do the do with more than 100 females in a season.
Fertilized egg sacs then deliver a thousand or more newborns, taking around 45 to 60 days to gestate under the mother's watchful eye. Err, eyes. All eight of them.
That's a lot of baby spiders, all trying to climb the web of success, and creeping it real.
When we lived in Colorado, we spent some time in the southern tier of the state, and while we saw the odd tarantula — in those days, at least, they seemed fairly common — we never saw this kind of a swarm, though. My father, on the other hand, described once driving from LaJunta, Colorado, to Yuma, Arizona, and he used to spin the tale of an early-morning highway completely covered with tarantulas, soaking up the warmth of the pavement - and the mess they made of the car.
Come to think of it, I'll pass on the spider swarm.
Reportedly, biologists are even now trying to get a good count of the tarantulas — call it a spider census.
I'll show myself out.
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