Have you ever lost a tarantula to impaction

3 Comments

  • Pamela - 1 month ago

    My curly hair tarantula has passed tonight from impaction after suffering for a week (that i know of for sure and perhaps longer) FUNNY UNRELATED THING::: i was very far into my original comment then i dropped my phone on my face and hit the back button ???? Anyhow, I have footage of her last and final molting event. I also have footage of the 3 times i wiped her; each time feces did ooze out. She's molted 9 times since I bought her October 2018 and i preserved them all. Her normal behavior is to web up all over very often. After that 9th molt tho she never spun web again. I'm glad i found your story OP-Tom and the others who commented with their stories Piper and nicodimus22. I no longer think that i somehow caused this or should have known and done something sooner. I agree that simply too little is known about this phenomenon. All the stories helped me thru my emotions about mine passing today.
    https://youtube.com/shorts/cDLAxkZr0MQ?si=PdIOnKTqO0_0fbVl

  • Piper - 2 years ago

    My girlfriend and I got our first T, a beautiful young adult GBB, at a reptile expo on October 4th, 2021. The vendor told us that he had raised her from a sling, and that she had just molted into her adult coloration a couple weeks before the expo. She had a couple dead crickets in with her, which she evidently killed but didn't eat, so we fed her for the first time shortly after rehousing her into her permanent enclosure. She ate fine, so we never suspected anything was wrong in the beginning. We named her Salem, and got to feed her only two more times. She took her last meal on October 28th, 2021. We obviously didn't see how her last molt had gone, nor did we know what her normal behavior usually looked like; she acted like a normal GBB as far as we knew. We attempted to feed her for the 4th time in early November and she refused the meal. We thought it was strange since we knew she shouldn't be in pre-molt again this early. We had heard of impaction, but Salem did not have any visible obstruction and we knew it was fairly uncommon. It never even crossed our minds at the time because this was our first and only T. She webbed normal, although she would sometimes rub her abdomen on surfaces without any web coming out. She also rubbed her abdomen with her legs but we assumed she was kicking hairs into her webs. She also kept acting like she had never seen water before in her life despite having a full water dish, but we just assumed she preferred drinking off the side of the enclosure. Looking back, the symptoms are uncanny. The week of Christmas, Salem suddenly moved out of her hide, and started hanging out on the entire opposite side of her enclosure where we had never even seen her before, and she stopped webbing. We felt something was amiss and kept a really close eye on her during that week. Then on the morning of December 28th, 2021, Salem stopped responding. She was very low to the ground, almost like a stress curl, and didn't move when we poked her toes or blew on her. We put down a wet paper towel in front of her and she finally moved, dragging herself onto the towel. She started drinking but eventually fell off the towel, seeming to have no strength to hold on. We pinch grabbed her and set her mouth over her water dish, but she still didn't seem to have the strength to drink. Eventually we flipped her onto her back and drip-hydrated her a few times a day, which sustained her for 2 more days. On the morning of December 30th, 2021, she had gotten flipped back around and seemed to be doing a bit better, but we kept trying to hydrate her anyway. Then, that night at around 6pm, we noticed that she had died. She wasn't in a death curl, but she didn't respond. My girlfriend gently pulled one of her legs up, and she just kept it like that, even 24 hours later her leg was still in the air. We were waiting until her abdomen shriveled to pronounce her dead, but it never happened. So to be certain, we set her in the freezer to make sure she passed without suffering, as she had been in obvious distress all week. We decided that we wanted to taxidermy her, but we weren't prepared for what happened when we opened her up. Like others have cited, feces filled her abdomen which had been what was preventing it from deflating. We found an obstruction of tough feces that looked like cottage milk on the inside near the anus, but still nothing was ever visible from the outside. Reading this info did help us not to feel like Salem's death was our fault. It was just very bad luck that our first and only T died from impaction. We took this death particularly hard, but we wanted to share so there is more information about impaction on the internet.

    For the record, we decided not to give up the hobby and picked up a B. Auratum and another GBB, both slings. We've named them Mars and Neptune respectively.

  • nicodimus22 - 6 years ago

    A few weeks ago, I bought a juvenile female B. klaasi from another arachnoboards member. She seemed rather lethargic after being unpacked, but she was able to move OK and went inside her hide right away. She ate a cricket the following week, but refused after that. One morning, I found her in a death curl and immediately flipped her over, trying to get some water into her mouth. It worked. After a couple of hours, she grabbed the paintbrush handle I had been using to drip water in her mouth and turned herself over. She acted normal for 3 days, kicking hairs when disturbed, and staying in her hide.

    On the 4th day, she became a statue, basically. No death curl, but she seemed completely unable to move on her own. I again flipped her over and tried to hydrate her again. That was a week ago. She is still alive, but is very weak. She doesn't really respond to touch. The only way I know she's alive is that she will faintly wiggle her legs if I gently blow on her (she is on her back as I try to get more water in her mouth.) She released a small amount of feces a few days ago after I soaked her spinneret area in warm water, and that was the first time I had seen any from her. I'm guessing that she is so blocked up internally that the small amount she released isn't going to help. Part of me wonders if the seller knew that something was wrong, and another part of me says that these things just happen sometimes.

    Regardless, I'm trying to keep her mouth area wet in case she makes a miraculous recovery. Am I just prolonging her suffering? I've thought about putting her in the freezer, but if there is any chance that she could recover, I don't want to snuff her out.

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