From Fox News: Tarantula mating season is here — and if you’re in the Southwest, you might see hordes of these fist-sized spiders marching across the landscape.
From late summer through fall, male tarantulas emerge from their burrows on a singular mission: to find a female and mate before they die, experts say.
“These males … they’ve been alive for five to eight years,” Cara Shillington, a biology professor who studies tarantulas at Eastern Michigan University, told Fox News Digital, “They have one mating season. At the end of the season, they will die.”
This means that if you see a tarantula out and about between August and October, you’re witnessing its grand finale — the final act in a long, hidden life underground.
If you see a tarantula, stay cool Tarantulas tend to avoid confrontation and will typically avoid you. Shillington said “they’re more scared of you than you are of them.”
“Tarantulas don’t pose any threat at all,” she told Fox News Digital. They only bite as a defensive move, so you can avoid a bite by giving the arachnid their space.
“Any time you try to grab it, the first thing it’ll do is try and run,” said Shillington. “They respond to anything trying to grab them as a threat.”
Tarantulas are commonly found in Texas, Arizona, California, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Southeastern Colorado.
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