Marius wrote: Nah, not an answer. Wild speculation. I think anybody else's speculations are as good as or better than mine unless they have some background knowledge. Where's Phran?

Spoke to someone and so far what you are saying seems to be the best/most suitable answer.

Sent with Uncle Charlie's Pokie machine

There is just too much we don't know. Or perhaps we do but I am ignorant.
Where did they originate? Is our New World their Old World, and they moved East, or did they start somewhere in the middle?
Or is it one of those cases of parallel evolution where the same thing happens in more than one location without one shared source animal.
Did the NW or OW lot have a certain predator to which they had to adapt, like that poor massive endangered parrot whose instinctual behavior is still dictated by a long extinct predator? What other defense mechanisms existed but were made redundant?
Many, many questions..

Marius wrote: There is just too much we don't know. Or perhaps we do but I am ignorant.
Where did they originate? Is our New World their Old World, and they moved East, or did they start somewhere in the middle?
Or is it one of those cases of parallel evolution where the same thing happens in more than one location without one shared source animal.
Did the NW or OW lot have a certain predator to which they had to adapt, like that poor massive endangered parrot whose instinctual behavior is still dictated by a long extinct predator? What other defense mechanisms existed but were made redundant?
Many, many questions..

Clearly way to many questions and it almost feels to me like if one question gets answered that it might just open it up to even more questions...

Sent with Uncle Charlie's Pokie machine

Last night I googled across a paper studying Theraposidae in the fossil record. Is behind a pay wall, but would make great reading I'm sure.

IMHO I think they call it EVOLUTION...

Well... I don't think there has been enough research here to do much better than speculation or educated guess work.

This thread however did get me on an interesting googling spree and finding some of the work of a Dr. Goodacre and ultimately a complete thesis by a J. Bull (Tarantulas and Social Spiders: A Tale of Sex and Silk)

Not really related but interesting reading no less... thought I'd share :whistle: