Got to watch Kamoku (The Bug) eat today :)
For those who don't know what Kamoku is - she is a large, odd looking arachnid. Original thread at - http://petoftheday.com/talk/showthre...threadid=40123
I got to actually see her hunt and eat for the first time today.
Wolfchan and I dropped 4 (2 too many) crickets in to the enclosure with her. Within seconds she had gone in to hunt mode. Her pedipalps lifted up and away from her cephalothorax forming a set of raised V shapes... She lifted her body off of the cork bark and started moving that feeler arm around just kind of randomly. The cricket passed her twice, never actually contacting the feeler arm. On it's third pass, she moved amazingly fast for such an awkward looking creature (look at the back legs in most of those pics to see what I mean by "awkward looking")... She grabbed the cricket with both pedipalps simultaneously and started grinding the cricket in them until she had punctured it pretty well, then started to eat.
Absolutely incredible :)
Even more awesome was that once she had finished with her second food item, I got to watch her clean up. Similar to the Scorpions I've seen, she cleaned the pedipalps and chelicerae (outer and inner mouthpieces respectively) with each other many times until she was content with her cleanliness, but it's just awesome to see the way it looks with those enormous pedipalps...
I'll try to get pictures and/or video next time :)
I've done a bit more research now, and while I don't have all of the answers I was searching for, I discovered a few other nifties and have to clarify the age of TWSs...
Fossil records of Amblypygids have been discovered dating back to the Carboniferous period in Earth's history... that is 280-340 MILLION years ago.
We believe Kamoku is probably a Tanzanian due to her current size, and the shape of the pedipalps.
The enclosure she's in is probably not going to be her permanent one, as it's <10 gallon and I've now been told that adult Tanzanians should have 10+ gallon enclosures.
So, yeah... I get excited over little things, so sue me ;P:)
