Tarantula Photo by Mark Heuston click image to enlarge
Oh yes! Tarantulas cause more fuss when they are out and about than most any other spider or insect. You can’t be a big (3 - 4 inches) hairy predator with 8 legs and two beady black eyes without inciting reaction – pleasure and a smile of welcome from those familiar with these Hollywood branded terrorists or horror and fear from those in need of reassurance. The intention here is to reassure.
In the Mojave Desert these large bodied spiders are commonly seen in November when the males emerge and begin their migrations across the desert in search of receptive females. The males spend anywhere from three to ten plus years (sources vary on this) to reach sexual maturity. When ready, they grow a pair of claspers (look behind the knees on their first pair of legs) which are used to hold on to the female while copulating.
After copulation the male tarantula’s life is essentially over and he will survive for only a short time. As with other spiders, the female may devour the male to provide nourishment for the developing eggs. In his weakened state he also becomes easy prey for other predators.
The sedentary female tarantula has a life span of about 20 years becoming mature about 10 years of age. A female molts once a year which includes loosing the lining of the epigynum, the reproductive structure where the sperm are stored making mating essential before she can produce fertile eggs. After mating she lays her eggs in a burrow and may stay with them until they hatch. The young remain in the burrow until they are ready to disperse.
Given the outrageous examples of other arachnids, the life style of tarantulas, played out slowly over a number a years, is fairly tame.
Illustration by Callie Mack
Tarantula Diet
Tarantulas are among the hunters of the night: they feed on insects like grasshoppers, beetles, other small spiders, arthropods, and occasionally small lizards. Evidently size is a trigger for they will attempt to overcome anything the right size that moves in their range.
Diet of Tarantulas
Lizards, snakes, spider-eating birds, coyotes, and foxes are known to predate on tarantulas.
Tarantulas as Wasp Nurseries
The Tarantula Hawk, a large black wasp with orange wings, searches out tarantulas and attempts to sting them. If successful the sting paralyzes the tarantula and the wasp lays an egg on it before sealing it up in a burrow. The spider, held in suspended animation, provides the “fresh meat” for the wasp grub to eat after it hatches from the egg. The grub knows to avoid vital organs until the very end of its development.
Two More Things…
Since spiders have no teeth with which to chew their food they rely on their venom to liquefy their prey. They use their sucking stomachs to draw in or “suck” up a meal.
Illustration by Callie Mack
Tarantula venom is weak (bee sting strength) and they are gentle animals when respectfully approached and handled. They are, however, not passive and may react to aggressive or rapid movements. Do not pick them up by the back (aggressive) but allow them to walk onto your hand. Tarantulas use the specialized hairs on their abdomen which are barbed and irritating as defensive weapons when threatened.
There are many other interesting facts to learn about spiders but we hope this is enough to set your fears at ease so you can enjoy these fall beauties as they walk-about, propelled by familiar yearnings.
ANTS - Love and Hate
Worker ant of unknown species - Provided courtesy of Carolyn
Gatlin, Grade 3, scholar and explorer, Rocky Mountain School of
Expeditionary Learning
ANTS ARE SOME OF THE MOST FASCINATING CREATURES ON THE PLANET. Something like ten thousand trillion ants control vast stretches of territory. Their success lies in cooperation. They are a social insect, living in often enormous colonies, coordinating their activities to an exceptional degree to achieve domination. These are aggressive
and capable critters, ones whose existence is
characterized by continuous work and conflict. In
many places they are the dominant insect, and
usually displace solitary insects (those that live and
forage alone and not in social groups) to less
favorable habitat or eat them.
Ant society is a world of
females. Colonies are
dominated by the queen ant,
and she controls the
reproduction of her colony.
The queen starts life as a winged creature, and
along with winged male ants they leave an
established colony to start a new population. They
emerge from the nest, often in vast swarms, and
mate in midair. The females land, rip off their
wings, and begin digging to establish a colony. The
males simply die in heaps, after having lived a short
but let’s hope reproductive life. The queen then
stores the sperm in a special bag near the abdomen,
and uses this reproductive material for the rest of
her life. All eggs that she fertilizes become female,
and all the worker ants you see around an ant
colony are females. Males are created when eggs are
not fertilized, and only when they are needed to
start a new colony. It hardly seems fair. The queen
even chemically controls what kind of female ants -
queens, workers, soldiers - will be created. She is an
egg laying machine and it is the task of the rest of
the colony to help her maximize her reproduction.
One of the most common desert
ants are the harvesters. These
ants construct often enormous
craters, sometimes two feet or
more in diameter. They are cold blooded creatures,
emerging when temperatures go above 60 degrees
and move back underground when they top 111
degrees. Harvester ants feed on seeds, which they
gather in prodigious quantities. Workers from one
nest may gather 7,000 seeds a day. In one
experiment it was found that harvester ants found
considerable seeds from a plant species that hadn't
produced seed in over a year. They are hardy, and
readily attack other ants who intrude in their realm.
After a good summer rain, it is not uncommon to
find heaps of these ant’s wings from a sudden
massive spate of reproduction.
The Queens
Love and Hate
By Carolyn Gatlin
I love my job
I on the other hand hate it
A mother of so many children
Staying in my chamber For weeks, months, years On end
Life couldn’t be
Better
Life couldn’t be Worse
Egg, larva, pupa
Wonderful to watch
Them grow
Egg, larva, pupa Dreadful things to see
Plop plop
Oh an egg beautiful thing
Ewww, I do not like laying eggs
I love my job
I still hate it
Thanks to The Mojave National Preserve website for this
information on ants.
The Place No One Knew by Larry Hogue
In 1966, Eliot Porter published The Place No One Knew, a photo book about Glen Canyon, the exquisitely beautiful and culturally rich section of the Colorado River that had been inundated by the waters of Lake Powell three years before. The thesis: one of Earth’s outstanding features had been destroyed because hardly anyone, not even the Sierra Club, knew or appreciated what was there.
Recently, I had the opportunity to visit another place no one knows, or at least few hikers and conservationists know: the Algodones Dunes in southeastern California (called Imperial Sand Dunes by the Bureau of Land Management). I accompanied a group from the Center for Biological Diversity on a backpack crossing of one of the temporary vehicle closures in the Algodones, and what we discovered was a desert world unlike any other in southern California. At 150,000 acres, the Algodones are the largest — by far — of the sand dune systems of the Southwest. With otherworldly beauty, several endemic and rare species, and unparalleled opportunities for solitude, the dunes clearly merit protection as a national monument or wilderness area. Between two and eight miles wide and fifty miles long, they offer ample space to lose yourself for a day, a weekend, or, given enough water, even longer.
An English Major's Approach to Deep Ecology:
The Polity of Anthropocentrism by James P. Ricker
Political, & fr. Gk. Politiea, fr. Poilit†s citizen, fr. Polis city, state, akin to Skt. Pur rampart, Lith. Pilis castle.from Merriam Webster’s 10th Collegiate Dictionary.
The California Desert Tortoise, Gopherus aggassizii, makes its home in mid-size burrows, up to twenty feet deep depending on soil conditions, one to a tortoise, well away from any near (tortoise) neighbors. He or she will spend most of her life, up to 90% of it, just hanging out inside her burrow, waiting for the temperature to rise or the cactus to bloom, or for those occasional springtime urges. It is a solitary but not a lonely life. A tortoise has neighbors, relatives, rivals, and mates. A tortoise habitat is a quiet place, but the local population, while not overly demonstrative, is quite enough tortoises for the local available resources and the thing is, they don’t go far from their homes, so the population density of an area where tortoises live is the highest it can be for a tortoise, and for the land he or she lives upon. But not enough for us.
The desert has held me captive since the first time I saw it from the back seat of dad’s ’37 Plymouth as we drove from Chicago to the west coast. The endless miles of Midwest farmed flatlands put me to sleep. The sight of snowy mountains got my nose to the window, but as we drove south and into the west from high pines and sandstone hills of Taos down toward the red mountains of Albuquerque, I had to be prodded to get me to stop staring and speak. Those red bluffs, stark against that New Mexico blue sky, shoulders clothed in mile high black and white cumulus, punctuated by afternoon dancing flashes of lightening, forever tied growing imagination to everything desert that comes to mind.
On the drive we often stopped to explore ancient Anazazi adobe villages – drove miles on unpaved road to visit Navajo pueblos, bought beautiful rugs and small curios, talked with artists about their crafts. More than once I overate my fill of blue corn tortillas, tasty tamales and spicy black beans. If asked, I would have said that I didn’t want to live in California. I'd yet to become mesmerized by the spectacular Colorado River, cutting its way through the mountains of Utah and Arizona and flowing into the shallow delta of the Sea of Cortez. I hadn’t seen the miles of giant soft-white rolling sand dunes for as far as eyes could see. It took an hour to drive through them as we followed the old wooden road out of the blowing sands toward EL Centro.
Ant society is a world of
females. Colonies are
dominated by the queen ant,
and she controls the
reproduction of her colony.
The queen starts life as a winged creature, and
along with winged male ants they leave an
established colony to start a new population. They
emerge from the nest, often in vast swarms, and
mate in midair. The females land, rip off their
wings, and begin digging to establish a colony. The
males simply die in heaps, after having lived a short
but let’s hope reproductive life. The queen then
stores the sperm in a special bag near the abdomen,
and uses this reproductive material for the rest of
her life. All eggs that she fertilizes become female,
and all the worker ants you see around an ant
colony are females. Males are created when eggs are
not fertilized, and only when they are needed to
start a new colony. It hardly seems fair. The queen
even chemically controls what kind of female ants -
queens, workers, soldiers - will be created. She is an
egg laying machine and it is the task of the rest of
the colony to help her maximize her reproduction.
One of the most common desert
ants are the harvesters. These
ants construct often enormous
craters, sometimes two feet or
more in diameter. They are cold blooded creatures,
emerging when temperatures go above 60 degrees
and move back underground when they top 111
degrees. Harvester ants feed on seeds, which they
gather in prodigious quantities. Workers from one
nest may gather 7,000 seeds a day. In one
experiment it was found that harvester ants found
considerable seeds from a plant species that hadn't
produced seed in over a year. They are hardy, and
readily attack other ants who intrude in their realm.
After a good summer rain, it is not uncommon to
find heaps of these ant’s wings from a sudden
massive spate of reproduction. 
