Mexican Redknee Tarantula

The Mexican redknee tarantula is a large, gentle spider with a dark body and dark legs. Its most famous feature is the ring of bright orange-red colour on each knee, which is how it got its name. Its body is about five centimetres long, and its legs stretch out much wider than that.

This tarantula lives only in Mexico, along the Pacific side of the country. It makes its home in warm, hilly forests that dry out for part of the year. There it digs a cosy burrow under a log, a rock, or some tree roots, and lines it with silk. A female may spend most of her whole life close to that one burrow.

Redknee tarantulas rest during the day and come out at night to find food. They are patient hunters that wait near the burrow and grab passing insects like crickets and beetles. To help turn its small prey into a meal, the tarantula has a mild venom, just strong enough for tiny bugs. It is not interested in people and is very shy and calm.

Instead of trying to bite when something scares it, this spider usually turns its back and kicks off a cloud of tiny hairs from its tummy with its back legs. The hairs are itchy and ticklish and help keep hungry animals away, giving the tarantula time to slip back into its burrow.

Female redknee tarantulas are famous for living a very long time, sometimes up to thirty years, which is a great age for a spider. They grow slowly and only become grown-ups after many years. Males have much shorter lives, usually only about five years.

Sadly, there are fewer of these tarantulas in the wild than there used to be, because forests are being cleared and some spiders were taken to be sold as pets. Today there are special rules that limit selling them across countries, and they are looked after under an agreement called CITES so that wild redknee tarantulas have a safer future.