I can't remember where you said you got them from

Gotcha, I remember. They must be close to mature then? Anyways, back to this sac. If I has a phew offsprings, I will be making the best P metallica communal I have ever seen. Just like the other communal I am having, just a tropical Indian one, mark my wordings... Is gonna be a meter high with plantings and cork stuff and vent holes and so on, almost a "walk in" enclosure... Will be pletty...

I rotated the egg case 4 or 5 times a day, if memory serves. Might have been more or less, can't say what happens after wine.

On the 9th of May, the sac had a wet patch, I suspect a droplet or Isopod wee. This freaked me out somewhat, so I decided to open the egg case and incubate in a hammock. After opening, I found one black egg and an undisclosed number off perfect eggs.


I was not very happy with the way the eggs looked, I thought they looked unfertilized, so I sent an image to Hendrijs to clarify my doubts. He assured me that the eggs look healthy.

This afternoon (10 May 2012), I went back to do the routine turning and ventilationings. I found ONE egg with legs. :woohoo:
Thanks Hendrijs and Cerat for your broad shoulders...

Now I wait 48 hours, then hopefully there are more legs than eggs...

scarab@tarantulas.co.za

@ Hendrik and Ruan

What does infertile eggs look like, and how does one know if the eggs are fertile "what are the tell tale signs"?

Clearly some sucking of sibling bodily fluids. It is obvious how small two are and how fat the other three are. You can also see the fangs of one are embedded into its sibling, even the brownish scars of the wound. I will forgive that little shit if it turns female...

Amazing.
I wonder if this is not an evolutionary adaption to ensure that the spiders that eventually make it out of the eggcase are stronger?
Sometimes wonder if we are not breeding "weak" spiders by saving the weaker one's. Not that I would do anything different if I had eggs with legs feeding on others.

We are undoubtedly caring for the weak Cerat, that's what separates us from animals. Not a good thing looking at some folks in Government, but fortunately P metallica will never run for Office.

There can be no doubt that only the stronger ones eventually exit the egg case. One can also assume that not all egg cases would "survive" in the wild. There is no logical excuse for what I'm doing to protect as many as possible, If I am brutally honest, the only reason one would try to save as many as possible is for money. The root of all evil. So there you have it. No breeder would do it differently as you rightly said, and if they did, they are better people than I am.

So back to the little cannibals, they will probably be stronger adults.

This did not happen with the previous sac, I'm guessing?

I don't know Creator, it might have. I opened the previous sac at 23 days when they have all hatched, so they probably did feast on each other.