Tarantulas, like all things hairy, sometimes become bald. And for the Brazilian whiteknee tarantula (Acanthoscurria geniculata), baldness begins with the butt.
On Thursday (August 6) entomologist Gwen Pearson tweeted a photo of what that looks like. Pearson and her colleagues at the Purdue Insect Zoo at Purdue University in Indiana recently adopted the US Fish and Wildlife Service’s butt-necked arachnid, which occupied the spider and hundreds of others from an importer for black markets.
The pink-rumped spider (who named zoo officials’ Lil ‘Kim’ after the rapper who sported pink hair) does not owe his naked badonkadonk to age; according to Pearson, the specimen is less than 2 years old and can not reach adulthood until she is 5. Even Kim’s bald back is the result of a natural tarantula defense mechanism – and evidence of the physical stress of illegal pet trafficking.
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“Itchy butt hair is the primary defense for South American tarantulas, not bites,” Pearson told Live Email in Science. “And it’s SUPER itchy – – worse than glass fiber. An annoyance to humans, but very serious for small mice like other predators trying to eat a tarantula.”
Although the eight-legged Lil ‘Kim arrived at the zoo in a Tupperware container, filled with paper towels to protect her fragile exoskeleton, the trip was anything but enjoyable, Pearson said. Kim kicked almost all of her butt hair in transit, the proved spin was under enormous stress.
Removing spiders from the wild also stresses the environment, Pearson added, and is associated with species decline – in part because it takes so long to complete the arachnids. Despite this, tarantulas are one of the most traded animals in the world, Kelli Walker, senior keeper at the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden in Ohio told the Cincinnati Enquirer. (That zoo recently adopted eight spiders from the same smuggled consignment for its collection.)
Back at Purdue, Kim will be part of an effort to raise tarantulas in captivity to help reduce tensions on wild populations. And luckily, Lil ‘Kim can count on her built hair to grow back soon – however, she will have to grow a whole new layer fel in the process, Pearson said.
“The only way [tarantulas] the ‘hair’ it can replace is to completely replace its entire exoskeleton, “Pearson explained. It is not hair like ours; each hair is a thin extension of its hard outer shell. “
Unripe tarantulas like Lil ‘Kim milk their exoskeletons every few months. It may take the arachnid a little extra time to adjust to her new habitat in the zoo before she can start mowing, Pearson said, but Kim’s ass can be gloriously hired again by Thanksgiving. And for that we can all be grateful.
Originally published on Live Science.
