For all those people from the U.S. and other countrys where you can find tarantulas!

I notice on this forum that there are alot of you who come from areas in the U.S. and other countrys where tarantulas are found.
With this in mind, are any of you doing or ever thought about doing any studies relateing to any tarantula "colony" that may be found in your area in the way that William J. Baerg did?

Now I relise that this is alot easier said than done,I mean you first have to find a tarantula colony which is not too far from where you live, (Not an easy task I know) but would it not be worth while to try?

How much do we know about a tarantulas life? To my mind not alot! Sure alot of people go off to far of countrys and find them,make a note of the habitate,maybe find a new species etc, but there arn´t alot of people who actuality try and studie a colony over many years....or are there?

Now I know that this is not possible with most species of tarantula as they found in those hard to get to unpopulated places of the world, and you would need one hell of alot of funding.But if your lucky enough to have a colony which is almost on your "door step" so to speak, then whats to stop you?

Don´t get me wrong!I´m not saying that you have to go and sit and observe the colony everyday for the next 40 years. We all have to sleep,Work, eat etc so this is not possible, but everyone (well almost everyone) has free time, and if just a little of this was given to such a project I think we could learn quite abit about a trantulas life? Or do we already know all there is to know?
In regards to taxonomy,I know that there are alot of people working hard to try and sort it all out in to something we can all understand,and the new advances in DNA research I think is quite exciteing as who knows what it will turn up in the end regarding species.

But what about the tarantulas colonys themselfs? How does a drought effect them? what happends during a flood?How far will a male go in seach of a mate? When do the males mature? How many females will it mate with? Does the mating happen at night, during the day,inside the burrow outside the burrow,Whats the norm?How far do the spiderlings disperse to?

There are so many questions like this, some of which have and some of which have not been answerd.

Of couse you wont get all your questions answerd in a few weeks,you may even never get all your quetions answerd! But would it not be intresting to try? Even if much you find out only aplys for one partictular tarantla colony its a start isn´t it?

I know that this post is going to get answers (If it gets any answers)like "hell the hell can we do that?" ,"We already know how they live!" , "whats the point?" , "thats an impossible task!" ,"That would take years of work!"etc ,etc But for me this is just the talk of unintresting people without any real insight!
Off course its easy for me to say all this sat behind my computer,but then the only tarantulas I can look at are the ones I keep, which is a far cry from the wild! Also I don´t think this is an easy thing to do and if you did find a colony where do you start? But what I do think is that if the opertunity is there, then its at least worth a try!

Anyway ill shut up now as Im sure I have bored the <EDIT>of most of you But hey a bloke can dream can´t he? ;P

I tried to find a tarantula colony here in Kansas so I went to a lake near by. I was just driving around taking some photos of the area when I happened upon this,



I found an area on the side of this hill that had many, many of these webbed holes the size of a half dollar coin. I couldn't get any of the residents to come out since the tunnels were quite deep but I'm betting it is a colony of tarantulas. I've heard stories from people here saying they see large wolf spiders on the roads sometimes(I doubt they are wolf spiders ) so I'm fairly confident they are tarantulas. I would love to study them but as you said yourself, I have a rather busy schedule. I wish I could have gotten one to come out so I could have gotten a photo.