Tarantulas

Tarantulas are very scary because they have hairy, long legs! The venom from a tarantula is actually weaker then from a bee sting. Tarantulas walk slow on their 8 hairy legs and insects are their main prey but they can also hunt down larger game like frogs, toads, and mice.

The Tarantula lives in the ground and there are are hundreds of Tarantula species in the worlds tropical , subtropical, and dessert regions. Tarantulas do not use a web to catch it's prey, they grab with their legs and paralyze them with venom and they bite with their fangs.

A wasp can paralyze a Tarantula with their sting and then lay eggs on the spider. Then the larvae would chow down the still living spider. The Tarantula can shed their external skeleton in a process called molting. The Tarantula can also regrow the internal organs and can regrow missing legs.

Tarantulas are carnivores and eat mostly insects. After a long meal, the Tarantula may not need to eat for a month. Tarantulas can live to be 30 years old out in he wild. They can weigh up to 3 ounces. To learn about Tarantulas go to http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/Animals/CreatureFeature/Tarantulas