I have a new colony of critically endangered animals that have literally appeared out of nowhere! My pet Gooty sapphire tarantula (Poecilotheria metallica) mysteriously laid an egg sac a couple months ago in her terrarium, but to the best of my knowledge she hadn’t mated. I was told it might be a ‘phantom’ egg sac, full of unfertilized eggs that she would eventually eat, but low and behold, the egg sac ended up hatching some 20-30 spiderlings! This birth event was special because the species is both critically endangered in the wild and reportedly communal!

In this episode, we meet our new colony of sapphire tarantulas, watch them feed, and discuss what we should do with them to help save them from extinction and possibly learn about keeping tarantulas in colonies. Hope you enjoy today’s spider episode! PS – Stay tuned for the additional fire ant update at the end!

MY NEW COLONY OF CRITICALLY ENDANGERED BEASTS (that came out of nowhere)

I still have no idea where they came from, but guys, I’ve suddenly become an owner of a new colony of some critically endangered beasts that have literally appeared out of nowhere!

I know, right?! Crazy!

Let me explain!

So, last year I built a naturalistic terrarium featuring tropical plants, an organic wall, and the coolest feature—this tree hollow, which was to become the ultimate lair for a new, cool animal I introduced to the channel—this gorgeous sapphire tarantula!

Now, arachnophobes, please stay with me because this is where it gets incredible!

She crawled into the hollow as planned, but little did I know, she would not be eating nor leaving this hollow for the next two months.

She completely sealed herself in with silk, and one day, out of nowhere, I saw this!

She had laid an egg sac!

But how could this be possible?

I hadn’t mated her with another male.

I asked the pet store owner I bought her from, and he also said she hadn’t previously mated.

So, some of you arachnid experts told me it was a phantom egg—just a sac of unfertilized eggs that I could remove after 28 days if she didn’t end up eating them herself.

But guys, a month after this egg sac was laid, I peeked into the hollow and couldn’t believe my eyes!

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How could this be possible?!

Tons of baby sapphire tarantula spiderlings had hatched from the egg sac and were now cuddling up next to one another with mom, within their silk-lined tree hollow!

Oh boy!

So many questions, right?!

Well, I’ll explain everything, but guys, keep on watching until the end because I’ll be needing your help today with this colony!

So, get your voting fingers ready, as you all will be involved in helping me save this critically endangered species.

Okay, so there were several reasons this birth event was pretty amazing!

First, this was a very special species.

So get this—sapphire tarantulas are unique because they apparently can be housed communally in a colony!

Arachnophobes, hang on! Don’t panic!

Communal spiders or tarantulas are rather rare in the spider world, as most species would happily attempt to eat each other at a single opportunity.

So rest assured—unless you live in the small town of Gooty in India, where these tarantulas are from, you won’t have to worry about a colony of these arachnids invading your space.

Which brings me to the next crazy thing that makes the birth of these spiders super important, and that’s that these tarantulas are classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

It’s sad, but their habitats are being threatened due to logging and firewood harvesting, and they are only found in such a small area in India.

But thankfully, humans have been breeding them for the past 10 years in the arachnid hobby, so we tarantula hobbyists are the species’ refuge and last hope!

Yay, tarantula keepers!

So AC Family, this week we take a quick break from the usual ant colonies of the Ant Room—of which, by the way, I also have an update on, which I’ll fill you in on at the end of this video—so stay tuned for that!

But for now, let’s meet our new family of critically endangered sapphire tarantulas!

I just know you’ll love them!

So these newborns were pretty much subsisting off their yolk still, so they didn’t need food yet.

It was kind of hard to see them through all that silk, but I could see some individuals, and my, were they spectacular!

Have a look!

I wasn’t exactly sure how many there were, but I counted about 20 to 30 spiderlings in the group.

They all snuggled up to one another, enjoying the safety of this silken catacomb, woven by mom.

Can you imagine?

These babies have no idea how big the world outside is yet, as for these first few days of life, they’re stuck at home (aren’t we all?), but having mom around is a great thing, as she herself is quite the ferocious beast!

She’s massive, with an 8-inch leg span, and venom that is known notoriously as being one of the most potent of all tarantulas.

She’s a feisty one, as we saw when I attempted to move her in here, and I have no doubt in my mind that she would defend these babies with her life if anything ever tried to break in.

A week later, while most of the babies were still hanging out inside the silken nest, some brave individuals had ventured closer to the opening of the wood hollow so I could see them better.

I did notice that some of the spiderlings had already had their first molt, so I placed some chopped-up mealworms for individuals to feed on when they were ready.

At this age, they can settle for feeding like this and don’t particularly need live moving prey like when they’re older.

For spiderlings, these babies were pretty big!

They were just a bit over a centimeter long, and check out how their legs are already taking on that signature sapphire tinge of mom!

Stunning!

I knew that every time these spiderlings molted, they would be hungry and needed food, and for now, these mealworm chunks were sufficient.

But I knew eventually, I would need a steady supply of small living feeders—smaller than the Dubia roach hatchlings that I had an abundance of from my roach farm but sadly were totally being ignored by the spiderlings.

In light of the massive lockdown in my city and an inability to buy feeders at a pet store, I needed a solution to feed these baby spiders, and I had a few days to come up with it.

A week later, our spiderlings had grown much bigger now and had all ventured outside of the nest, as mom had completely torn open the silk entrance.

The babies were beginning to explore the outside world.

I saw them hanging out on the walls of the terrarium, on the bark, and some brave individuals were daring enough to venture beyond their tree hollow onto the plants.

Take a look at how cute they are, with their awkwardly long legs!

They really were looking more and more like mom now!

They still retreated frequently into the darkened safety of their tree hollow, gathering there to rest for most of the day.

You know, it was cool seeing a bunch of spiders getting along like this.

But for a colony to be considered a “colony” in my mind, I felt the individuals had to somehow cooperate at gathering food, like in ants, or in the very least, hunt for food together.

And, AC Family, we’re about to see this behavior now!

Brace yourselves for our sapphire colony’s first communal hunt!

My video released a couple of weeks back, where I talked about how I had to get rid of some of my ant colonies due to lockdown in my city making it difficult to access feeders, was watched by someone in my city who was kind enough to lend me some of his cockroach feeders to add to my roach farm.

But it just so happened, he also had a ton of newborn Turkestan roaches, which were the perfect size and prey for our colony!

The spiders were gathered and hungry for some meat.

Some had even begun to forage.

The roach hatchlings were now released into their territories and were beginning to explore the premises, unknowing that predators were waiting in ambush at every unexpected turn.

The roaches began to climb the bark, and they inched closer and closer to the spiderlings.

Snatched!

They were picked off one by one!

Some were smart enough to pick them off right at the source by the egg carton I inserted into their terrarium.

The roaches continued to wander around the territories as the spiders continued to feast on them roach by roach.

It took less than 30 minutes for each spider to finish a whole baby roach, and afterward, they would resume the hunt for more or start cleaning themselves to prepare for rest until they were hungry again.

This communal feeding happened until there were no more baby roaches left.

The spiderlings seemed to be happy living as a group, but I knew I had to make sure all these spiderlings were well-fed, if this communal setup was going to work out.

I also had to make sure the spiders were kept in a limited enclosure like this, which forced them to be around each other at all times, keeping them used to being part of a colony.

Moving these spiderlings to a giant tank, where they had the chance to break off into solo existences, increases the chance of cannibalism.

I also made sure mom was very well-fed so she wouldn’t ever think of eating her babies, and at this point, her babies were definitely bite-sized for her if she ever wanted to eat them.

Check out those massive fangs!

I’d hate to be that cockroach!

But despite her menacing demeanor, it completely amazed me how gentle she always was around her precious spiderlings, with some spiderlings crawling all around her legs and even touching her fangs.

This was truly spider love if I ever saw it, and such an honor to witness.

Okay, guys, so this is where I will need your help!

Please have a listen to our options.

With these new babies, I knew we were now faced with two very unique opportunities.

First, we could raise these tarantulas as a colony and peek into the largely unexplored world of communal tarantulas together!

For one thing, only a small percentage of spider species in the world have been classified as communal, these spiders being one of them.

Plus, with adult sapphire tarantulas going for over $500 US dollars a piece, you can appreciate why most owners of this species opt not to try a communal setup—as the risk might be too great in fear of cannibalism.

But from what I’ve read in arachnid forums, though a controversial topic, there have been a lucky few people in the world who have actually tried it, and have successfully kept the species communally with spiderlings raised together, like in this photo from Tom Patterson.

It’s indeed possible, but generally hasn’t been done a lot in the hobby.

So suddenly, our spiders here can become our arachnological case study in communal tarantulas!

Not to mention, there are scientific questions left unanswered.

Like, how were these spiderlings even born?!

Could it be possible sapphire tarantulas are parthenogenic and can clone themselves without a partner?

If all these spiderlings turn out to be female, then that would be strong evidence that this species is capable of parthenogenesis, and what a discovery that would be!

Second, we now have a unique opportunity to help propagate and save the species, along with hobbyists worldwide who are breeding the species, which is so important because they are approaching extinction in the wild.

I personally don’t care to make a profit from them, so I won’t be selling them.

All I care about is learning and tarantula discovery!

So now, my question to you guys is, what do you think we should do?

Should we seize this opportunity to learn more about sapphire tarantula colonies, and continue to raise them communally?

If we go this route, there is, of course, the risk that one day the tarantulas will start eating each other, at which point I’ll separate them, but could you imagine if we are successful?!

Imagine a big terrarium with 20 or more massive sapphire tarantulas huddling, feeding, and living together in a single environment, and documenting it all on film?!

That would be just crazy!

I also wonder if they would continue breeding, until the colony is massive, with hundreds of tarantulas!

Okay, so there’s that option!

Or are you thinking:

Who cares about discovering what keeping a communal tarantula species is like?!

This is a critically endangered species we’re talking about!

Keeping these tarantulas communally is just too risky, and we should be thinking about saving as many individual spiders as we possibly can to ensure our conservation efforts to save the species are maximized!

Or perhaps we could try a mix of both?

Maybe, we can try to keep some tarantulas individually and keep the rest communally?

So guys, please take a quick moment to vote here to help determine what we ultimately do with these sapphire tarantulas.

Thank you, AC Council, for your valuable input.

And while we’re at it, AC Family, I think you know what’s next!

What should we name our new sapphire tarantula colony?

Let me know in the comments, and I’ll choose my favorites for us to vote on in a future video.

As always, you guys help determine the fate of the inhabitants of our Ant Room, and even if these precious 8-legged creatures aren’t ants, I believe we still have a duty to care for them as best we can, so that their species can live on, and hopefully along the way, we can discover how amazing it is to be caregivers of this new colony of critically endangered beasts that came out of nowhere.

Thank you for watching!

It’s ant and spider love forever!

Hey, what’s going on here?!

Wow! Tons of fire ants above ground?!

They’re everywhere!

Something’s happening, guys, and I’m not quite sure what it is…

AC Family, did you enjoy today’s episode?

Keep up to date with our new colony of sapphire tarantulas and what is going on with the Phoenix Empire?

All answers will be revealed next week, so if you haven’t yet, do SMASH that SUBSCRIBE button and BELL ICON now, and hit ALL so you get notified at every upload.

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It would really mean a lot to me, guys.

Thank you!

AC Inner Colony, I have left a hidden cookie for you here if you would like to hear my take on what’s happening here with the Phoenix Empire.

And guys, did you know that it’s anting season in the Northern Hemisphere?

And you don’t even need to leave your home to start an ant colony?!

You can catch pregnant queen ants from the safety of your own backyard, balcony, or open window starting this month!

Be sure to visit AntsCanada.com for all your ant-keeping and collecting gear, shipped to you in a special package from our ant-loving facility in the USA, so you can get the most out of your ant-keeping experience.

We ship worldwide and also offer full email support if you need our help!

Visit AntsCanada.com today.

And now it’s time for the AC Question of the Week!

Last week, we asked:

What was one of the several signs that the Phoenix Empire was exploding greatly in population?

Congratulations to Jill P, who answered:

They were consuming whole Madagascar hissing roaches.

Congratulations, Jill P! You just won a free Ultimate Ant Keeping handbook from our shop!

In this week’s AC Question of the Week, we ask:

Name one condition that needs to be met in order to decrease the chances of cannibalism in our spiders?

Leave your answer in the comments section, and you could also win a free eBook handbook from our shop!

Hope you subscribe to the channel, as we upload every Saturday at 8 AM EST.

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It’s ant love forever!