You might have seen the video of the girl who had kept a huntsman spider as a pet. She looked happy in the video, keeping it in a box, feeding it with crickets and even letting it crawl on her hands. But, can you have a Huntsman Spider as a pet? It’s not that easy to keep a huntsman spider as a pet because there are many things you need to know before making such an impactful decision. Given below are some important points which will help you understand if keeping this spider as your pet is the right thing to do or not:
Huntsman spiders are not easy to be tamed
A huntsman spider is more like a wild animal than a pet. Its personality is aggressive and will often try to bite you. You have to handle it very carefully as its fangs are very strong, and it can easily penetrate your skin and break your bones. The best way to tame a huntsman spider is to put it in a jar and keep it in a warm place for a week or so. You can try giving it some crickets to eat during this period. If it doesn’t bite you, you can take it out of the jar and start handling it. This is not the easiest way to tame the spider, and if it doesn’t work for you, you will have to keep it in a jar for long and then finally release it in the wild. But this is the only way to tame a huntsman spider.
Huntsman spiders are very big
A huntsman spider can grow to be 14 inches in size. This is way bigger than any other pet you might have kept in your house. Keeping such a huge arachnid in the house might be a risky decision. It might tear your clothes and bite you while you are not paying attention to it. Also, a huntsman spider produces a pheromone which attracts other male spiders. So, keeping it in the house might be risky for the people living there. A huntsman spider also needs a large habitat for living happily. You cannot keep it in a small box and expect it to be okay. It requires a habitat as big as a small room. Such a habitat is not easy to be made at home.
Huntsman spider diet is difficult to maintain
Huntsman spiders eat insects like crickets, worms, moths, grasshoppers, etc. But what if you don’t want to kill crickets to feed your spider? You can use the ones that are bred in a laboratory. These crickets are not killed but are frozen, and the nutritional value in them remains the same. You can buy these insects from the nearby pet store. But what if these insects don’t have the right nutrition? You can feed them some vegetables like broccoli, spinach, carrots, and sprouts. But these vegetables have a very low amount of calcium. The ideal amount of calcium in vegetables is very low, and your spider won’t be able to get the right amount of calcium from such a low amount.
Huntsman spider requires a very large habitat
As we have discussed above that keeping a huntsman spider in a small box is not a good idea. You have to give it a habitat that is as big as a room, or bigger. Such a habitat is not easy to be made, and you will have to spend a lot of money for building it. You will have to buy special equipment for building such a habitat. Moreover, such a habitat also needs a lot of space. You will have to keep it in a place that is out of reach for children. You have to keep it in a place where it doesn’t hinder the activities of people in the house.
Conclusion
Keeping a huntsman spider as a pet is a difficult task. It is not easy to tame the spider. The spider has to be kept in a very large habitat, and it has to be fed with the right kind of food. You have to keep the habitat clean so that the spider doesn’t come in contact with the dirt. Keeping a huntsman spider as a pet is a difficult task and requires a lot of patience.
