Nourishment
Nourishment is of course very important. The food of a bird spider is in fact not very varied; crickets, grasshoppers,
perhaps a cockroach and once in a while a little newborn mouse. It is also advisable to always place a small tray with
water in the terrarium, so that the spider can drink at any time.
Pay attention : only feed animals bred for nourishment. You may never feed bird spiders things coming from your own garden.
The odds are that e.g. a grasshopper has eaten fertilized grass or something similar and this is highly dangerous for the
spider. The amount of food that a bird spider eats is very difficult to estimate. There are species of bird spiders that
often go on a diet and do not eat for months on end, others on the other hand are real greedy–guts.
When a bird spider does not eat for a good while, there is no reason for concern. Uneaten food should be removed after a few days.
The prey can lay eggs or die and start to rot and this will cause trouble such as little flies, mites or fungus in the terrarium.
Some bird spiders immediately bite into their prey, others choose to wait until it is completely dark and then start hunting.
The spider will throw its weight completely on the prey and will inject poison through its teeth. This will work as a kind of
sedative on the prey. By always increasing the poison, the prey will die from an overdose. Then the spider will vomit digestive
fluids from its stomach on the prey.
This way the prey becomes liquid and the bird spider can suck the food with his sucking stomach until only a small ball remains
containing the indigestible parts. The spider will then put this small ball away somewhere in a corner. Everybody should be as
neat and tidy as our bird spiders!
