Did You Know Thousands of Tarantulas Trek Across Colorado Each Year?

La Junta, Colorado hosts its Tarantula Fest September 25 and 26, marking the yearly mating trek in which male tarantulas walk up to ten miles across the plains to find females. The males use leg-like appendages called pedipalps to drum a rhythm outside a female's burrow, and a poor performance can be fatal.

Female tarantulas can live up to 35 years against the male's roughly ten, and sometimes eat their mates after breeding; males that survive often die shortly after from exhaustion or old age anyway. Along the way, males also risk the tarantula hawk, a wasp whose sting ranks among the most painful known, which paralyzes tarantulas to serve as living food for its larvae.

Festival organizers offer a parade, film screenings, and spider experts for anyone wanting a closer, safer look at the migration without the pedipalp percussion.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.