Had the most stunning little Psalmopoeus irminia. Was ±5cm before its last molt. After it molted it stayed in his web hide. I couldn’t see it through the web.

1.5 Weeks after the T molted it was out and I noticed something seriously wrong. Never seen these conditions before and was shocking to say the least. The Irminia’s legs were very long and twisted, could hardly grip or climb, also had no control over its legs, and didn’t have any fangs.

After consulting with friends and a senior member of this forum I decided to kill it.

I closing monitor all my Ts and I’m sure that molding conditions were right, thus do not understand this tragedy. Really not nice to see!!

ANY COMMENT??

WOW :ohmy: that does not look gud,,sorry to hear about that,,its the first time im seeing this,,but gud luck ,hope you get some answers

Interesting, so I can't help myself...

It is far more common for a spider to get stuck in a moult. This can be at the onset of the process, or any time during the process. This can, and is fatal in more cases than not.

It also happens that a spider "bleeds" to death after a moult due to hemolymph "leaking" from the joints, but this does not happen often.

What happened to your P irminia is far less common. I have never seen this condition as severe as this. There are obviously more questions than answers, so allow me to hypothesise.

The spider had a successful moult. It was able to escape the old exuvium, then things went south from there. Because the spider would have extracted perfectly formed limbs from the old exuvium, the problem must have occurred AFTER the moult. (Common sense tells me that it would not be able to extract skew limbs from the old exuvium. Because the entire NEW exuvium is soft, it must have been perfect when it completed its' moult.)

So what happened?

I am of the opinion that the new exuvium had various consistency issues. It is possible that the exuvium of the new limbs "hardened" at a different rate. Example: If you stick glue or sellotape to one side of a balloon and then inflate, the resulting inflated balloon would appear skew.

Bacause the spider "pumps" hemolymph into the new limbs shortly after the moult, it is my theory that the limbs were deformed due to varying thickness or consistency of the new skin, thus "pulling" them into this abnormal shape.

I doubt it would survive on it's own, so I think you did the right thing. It would probably starve to death had you not intervened.

Sorry to hear about your loss.

I don't know if it's just the lighting, but isn't it weird that the P. irminia is showing mature male colours? Surely at around 5cm (before moult) to 7cm (most probably after the moult) they show the normal "black" legs and abdomen with orange markings, and greenish carapace?

Wow, that disformity is bad!! Sorry you had to put the little thing down - but it was DEFINATELY for the best!

The spiders colours after the molt was also very weird too me as it had beautiful colour before the molt