Just a quick little observation I thought to share.

My daughter's A geniculata molted from about 5cm to about I guess 8 or so tonight. So, about an hour and a half later, after the spider had flipped back and moved a little from the molt I decided to go in and carefully retrieve the molt for sexing.

Usually, even with more aggressive spiders they just tuck their legs in a little and I get the old molt out with no problems.

This thing flew around, attacked the tongs and stood over the old skin in a threat pose. Legs up, fangs out, so I backed off and closed up the enclosure.

It then bundled up the old skin and is now happily munching away. I hope my haste didn't make it damage itself, plus, no sexing.

Wench.

Wow. Thanks for sharing!
Read about them eating the old molt but never being so passionate about it :starwars:

I hope no damage was done to the poor things soft fangs.

Hi Marius

I found that it isn't a good idea to disturb the T post molt for at least 2 days. Reason being that their bodies are extremely fragile. You will notice how the fangs are more of a white colour since it is still soft & by forcing them to use it, it may cause damage or defects.

My 2c whistle2

Also, the T could have already identified its exuvium as a meal & you decided to take that away from it, hence the aggression,,, :spider:

Runner wrote: Hi Marius

I found that it isn't a good idea to disturb the T post molt for at least 2 days. Reason being that their bodies are extremely fragile. You will notice how the fangs are more of a white colour since it is still soft & by forcing them to use it, it may cause damage or defects.

My 2c whistle2

Also, the T could have already identified its exuvium as a meal & you decided to take that away from it, hence the aggression,,, :spider:

Thanks Runner.

For sure. Before the new exoskeleton has sufficiently hardened the spider is vulnerable and so far, through a little more than I year and 150 odd spiders I have bargained on the spider knowing this as well. Hence my surprise when this one acted so aggressively to my intrusion. So far, once the spider has moved off the molting matt I have had no trouble getting the exuviae out without bothering the T.

Thanks Panama. I hope so as well.

@Kudu: This is the same crazy spider 9 months ago: tarantulas.co.za/forum/beginners/43348-r...qtongs-are-not-foodq

Very unusual but when they're small they do tend to do everything moult related much faster so maybe that's all it was. Don't think you need to stress about damaged fangs and stuff though, even that would come right after the next moult anyway