Those who own a tarantula or other pet spiders may love the idea of allowing their spider to crawl all over them. However, don’t be too surprised if the spider tries to escape or doesn’t stay on your body. Tarantulas, in particular, have a slightly larger brain than other spiders. Yet despite the minuscule change in size, it doesn’t contain the social intelligence to recognize or remember those who handle it.
Studies on dogs and cats have shown that, in the case of dogs, they’re able to recognize their handler’s face. Considering that dogs have a larger brain than spiders, it makes sense that they’d have some form of social intelligence. This made even more evident when you consider the social structure of canines.
Descended from wolves, canines maintain that pack-like mentality. They rely on their pack members for survival. Because of this close-knit society, dogs bond with one another. Their brain possesses the necessary social intelligence in order to form bonds.
Tarantulas and pet spiders do not. They don’t bond with their parents or siblings when they’re born. Some spiders even eat their parents or their siblings as soon as they hatch. Others simply fly or scuttle away.
Because they don’t possess the capability of bonding, their brain lacks the ability to remember faces. However, it may recognize you using other methods.
Can Pet Spiders Recognize Their Owners?
While they may not recognize your face entirely, they may recognize the chemical cues that you give off. An understanding of a spider’s biology is necessary to understand how a pet spider may recognize its handler. The first is to understand how a spider perceives the world.
Spiders view the world through a few different mechanisms. They can see, touch, and sense. They do not have nostrils or ears. Instead, they use their many eyes to quickly take-in their surroundings. They also use their legs to touch the world around them.
In regards to smell, the actual art of smelling is replaced by sensing the world through chemical cues. When you speak to or walk by a pet spider, it can tell you’re speaking or walking by because of sound waves. Those sound waves tickle the hairs on their legs and bodies.
They may turn to you not because they can hear what you’re saying, but because their bodies can feel the sound waves that you’re making.
The same goes for scent. Pet spiders can’t actually smell you. Yet your scent does give off a chemical cue that is interpreted by their tiny hairs. They may sense that your hand is near and turn towards you to examine the chemical cue more closely.
Do Spiders Have A Concept Of Memory / Facial Recognition?
The social intelligence of spiders and tarantulas is very low. Their brains are extremely tiny and most of it is made up of instinctual habits. Their brains are wired for feeding and defense. Because spiders are often in danger of being squished or killed by a bigger predator, they have to react quickly in order to survive.
Over time, their ability to sense the world has allowed them to quickly decipher between prey and predator. It will likely always perceive you as a predator because you’re larger. Even if you regularly feed your tarantula or spider by hand, it doesn’t see you as you. Rather, it sees a large hand coming near it with food.
Do Your T’s Like You Or Is It More That They Are Just Docile?
Tarantulas don’t bond. They don’t have the neural mechanism to create feelings of fondness or closeness. At most, you can hope to make your tarantula docile by regularly handling it and feeding it. This is best done with a young pet spider or tarantula. You have to overcome their natural instincts to perceive you as a predator.
You may find that a tarantula bites you frequently when you first handle it. This is merely a natural instinct to defend itself. Luckily, tarantula venom isn’t dangerous when taken in low doses. However, they should be kept away from small children and individuals who are ill.
To protect your skin, it may be worth it to purchase a thick glove in order to handle your pet spider or tarantula. Allowing them to crawl on you may allow them to become used to the chemical cues that you give off. Eventually, your tarantula may even become more relaxed in your presence.
However, that is a big uncertainty.
Can Spiders Build Relationships/ Feel Affection?
If your pet spider seems to let itself crawl on you without any problems, then it may be easy to perceive that the spider enjoys your company. They may even seem as though they’re affectionate. This isn’t the case. Scientifically speaking, spiders lack that ability in their neural makeup.
You can, however, make a pet spider or tarantula a little bit more relaxed in your company by regularly handling it when it’s younger. This habitual practice can slowly override their natural instincts to fight or flee when in the presence of a predator. Feeding your pet spider by hand or feeding it after handling it may be a way to rework their neural impulses into recognizing you as something that provides food.
How To Train Your Tarantula To Trust And Like You
Physically handling tarantulas can cause them stress. To avoid this, it’s often a better idea to let them live happily in their cage. Some species of tarantula are also a bit more docile than others. Rosehair tarantulas seem to be a bit more relaxed and docile, for example.
However, you can train them to go in the direction that you want by gently rubbing the hairs on the back of their legs or front of the legs depending on which direction you want them to go. You may also be able to entice them in certain locations with food.
Otherwise, the best thing to do is to leave your tarantula alone.