OMG I was sitting on my patio and in waltzed this awesome MF Palystes sp. (rain spider) Put her in a jar off the pet shop tomorrow to purchase an enclosure I guess. My MM Palystes sp. is gonna have some fun. Breeding Palystes sp. is going to be my first attempt. Will let the slings go ASAP.
My son is gonna be wild with joy when he wakes up.. He absolutely loves his spiders... Lost a small wolf spider in an unclean and unaired jar and he was devastated!!!!
Palystes sp. is in a purified glass jar with substrate and plenty of air holes.

Wish me luck.

Nice one Gringo... I am also very fond of Palystes sp, one of SA's fantastic local spiders.

Good luck with the breeding attempt, I dont think there is ever such a thing as too many rain spiders

I had a wolf spider a while back too, a colleague at work brought it from me. When I got it rehoused at home it promptly produced an eggsack so I let her go in my garden.

Would you believe it. The Palystes sp. that I caught just dropped an egg sack.
When I put her in the jar I had a suspicion she was ripe. So I decided to wait a few weeks before mating her.
Last night I popped 3 mid sized crickets into her jar and low and behold this afternoon I find an egg sack suspended in the middle of the jar. She even had ripped up some leaves that I placed in the jar for humidity and cover, placing them onto her egg sack for camouflage.

I had to rush back to work so will post some pics later.

Some pics.

That's pretty awesome. I had a female for a year and she died I haven't seen another female ever since. But males are just running around everywhere... Cool photos

I have one here too, I was at a braai the other night and the home owners son kept prodding at this "gogga" in the bush, when I went to look it was one of these and it only had 3 legs left from all the prodding, so i took it home with me and I am looking after it hoping it will re-grow it's legs, then I can let it go again, or give it to Gringo if he wants it?

They seem to love jars and tins for laying eggs, we had an old Frisco coffee tin lying at the back of our yard under the workshop roof for ages, then one day I was actually gonna toss it away, and as I picked it up and looked inside, there was momma with about 200 babies all around her and the egg sac. Very interesting spiders, and seem to have great visibility! They attack prey that they see, not like T's that basically use vibrations and movement to pick them up.

HS