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Here is a short photo story of a my little "scuba diver" Hysterocrates sp.*: A while ago I was told, that Hysterocrates hercules comes from tropical rainforest in Africa and is found at riverbanks - don't know if this is true. Because of this information, I thought to keep my Hysterocrates sp. a bit more humid, like other "mud spiders". I put my spiderling, with a bodylength of about 2 cm, in a 17 cm tall and 8 cm in diameter stewed fruit glass with a screw cap and a lot of holes in the cap. I filled it with 11 cm peat soil and kept it a little bit moist to slightly wet. After a few days she had dug a lot and built a burrow with several tunnels and exits.
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Now I wanted to see what it would
do, when the water level rose. So I "let it rain" till the
water level was standing about 2,5 cm above the ground and had also
flooded it's burrow with 2,5 cm, which reaches the bottom of the glass
(see photo
#1).
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From then on it was living in the "dry" upper parts of her burrow, BUT - this is the interesting thing - when I disturbed the spider, it would run down to the water line and putting it's first legs (see photo #2)... |
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...and the 'head' in the water (see
photo
#3).
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When I disturbed it a bit more, it continued
and dived completely (see photo
#4...
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...and photo
#5)...
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...and ran in the tunnel under the water
line in the direction of another exit (see photo
#6),...
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...but not immediately diving up.
It waited there for a while, sometimes for more than 15 minutes - the
first time I saw this I was afraid that it would drown. But the hair
of it's body caught enough air, so that it was protected in a "suit
of air" (see
photo #7)...
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...[insertion] at other times it doesn't
run in the flooded tunnel in the direction of another exit, but digs
herself in the mud on the ground and waits there till the disturbance
is gone (see photo
#8)[/insertion]...
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...after a while, when it thinks "the
coast is clear" again, it crawled further on (see photo
#9)...
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...and broke the surface at the opposite exit of the
tunnel (see photo
#10). The spider grew very well in this setup, got larger and larger, so that I rehoused it in a bigger tank.... |
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...now it is living in one of my "Haplopelma tanks" (see
photo
#11). These tanks are made especially for Haplopelma spp.
and other spiders, which live in tube-like burrows or which love to
dig a lot and deep. |
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On photo
#12 you can see a part of it's funnel. It has dug the whole tank
down, straight till the end, around the corner, along the "whole"
backside and on the opposite side 12 cm up again in a 48° angle.
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