LA JUNTA, Colo. — It’s the season of love in the Colorado plains and hundreds of travelers are flocking to this town of 7,100 nestled along the Arkansas River to see it in action.
This is the mating season for tarantula spiders. Male spiders scurry across the 443,000-plus acres on the Comanche National Grassland – the fourth largest grassland in the nation – looking to mate.
As part of the annual rite, hundreds of arachnophiles flock to La Junta to watch them emerge in droves. The town recently held its third annual La Junta Tarantula Fest.
Festivalgoers flaunted their tarantula-like traits in a hairy leg contest — a woman claimed the title this year — and paraded around in vintage cars with giant spiders on the hoods, The Associated Press said. The 1990 cult classic film “Arachnophobia,” which follows a small town similarly overrun with spiders, screened downtown at the historic Fox Theater.
For residents, tarantulas aren’t the scary creatures you see in the movie theater. They’re an important part of the local ecosystem.
Tarantulas found in North America tend to be docile, Cara Shillington, a biology professor at Eastern Michigan University who studies arachnids, told the AP. Their venom is not considered dangerous to humans but can cause pain and irritation.
“When you encounter them, they’re more afraid of you,” Shillington said. “Tarantulas only bite out of fear. If you don’t put them in a situation where they feel like they have to bite, then there is no reason to fear them.”
The dark brown to black ‘Colorado’ Brown tarantula thrives in the region of southeast Colorado because the females can make burrows in the plentiful undisturbed prairies on the national grassland.
The females tend to stick to those burrows for their entire lives, which can be up to 25 years. In September and October, the mature males wander in search of a female’s burrow, which she typically marks with silk webbing.
Once they attract the attention of a female, their coupling is quick, Shillington said. The male tries to get away before being eaten by the slightly larger female, who needs extra nutrients to sustain her pregnancy.
On one recent weekend, scientists, spider enthusiasts and curious Colorado families piled into buses just before dusk as tarantulas began to roam. Some used flashlights and car headlights to spot the arachnids once the sun set.
Among them was Nathan Villareal, a tarantula breeder from California who sells tarantulas as pets to people all across the United States. He told the AP he has been fascinated with them since childhood, and once he heard about the mating season, he knew it was a spectacle he needed to witness.
“We saw at least a dozen tarantulas on the road, and then we went back afterwards and saw another dozen more,” Villareal said.
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Publish date : 2024-10-03 05:23:00
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