How do stressed out Ts pass?

Hey there, out of curiosity cause it never happened to me, or unheard of.

How do a stressed out T die? Do they just pass without any sign or syndrome? How to measure their level of stressness - if there is such a thing? :wall: ... :?

I hope this is not a repost. I search "stress tarantula dies" but nothing relevant.

I've never had a tarantula die of this, but with most animals, the type of stress has a lot to do with how/why the animal dies. For example, chronic stress from an inability to express natural protective behaviors (ie. burrowing) or from excessive light, vibration, etc. may cause the animal to go off food or water or disrupt health-promoting behaviors (ie. grooming, pushing debris from tunnel, avoiding harmful stimuli etc) for a prolonged period of time, resulting in poor health that allows opportunistic infections and parasites to gain a foothold and kill the organism. Chronic stress from humidity and ventillation issues (ie. very poor ventillation or humidity opposite to the T's ideal conditions) may result in bacterial and fungal conditions that would not flourish on/in the organism in appropriate conditions. Chronic stress from temperature fluctuations or extremes can disrupt metabolic processes, damage digestive enzymes, or promote opportunistic infection. Chronic stress from malnourishment can damage gut flora and result in deadly deficiencies. And so on.

Essentially, stressors can be caused by any number of inappropriate conditions and may effect the tarantula in a wide range of ways. The exact cause of death is often not known when an animal dies of stress, particularly an animal that so little medical research has been done on, but it generally has to do with some sort of disruption of life processes related to the chronic stressor. I don't know if there is a way to measure how stressed an animal is, but if your tarantula is constantly displaying defensive behavior*, moving erratically all over its enclosure, unable to express natural behavior because of its care conditions, has gone off food/water for long periods of time AND is losing mass, is showing very atypical behavior for its species (ie. an arboreal that just hunkers on the ground, a burrowing pet hole that just paces around the tank and doesn't dig, etc), etc. these could be red flags for stress. It also goes without saying that an animal kept in grossly inappropriate conditions is pretty much chronically stressed.

*Obviously some sp. are more inclined for this than others, but if you have a curly hair throwing up a threat display, kicking hairs, and running willy-nilly all over its enclosure evey time someone in the room moves, I'd wonder if that animal has adequate opportunity to escape stressors.

Oh, never thought that noise and light would bother them. I guess Ts are seemingly easy to take care of so they don't have this problem or rather they take care of themselves most of the time.
What kinda animals you had that died due to stress?

Edited my original post, vibration should be there, not noise.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that T's are fragile waifs and you can't have a light on in your room or play music around them. However, because they are sensitive to vibration, it's probably stressful to have say, your giant booming bass speakers blasting next to their enclosures all day. Likewise, most have burrows, webs, tunnels, etc. so even nocturnal species won't be bothered by room lighting. However, if you're keeping some poor nocturnal burrower on an inch of wood chips with a big glaring flourescent light on the tank so you can watch it all day, it's going to be stressed.

I haven't really had animals die of stress; I tend to do what I can to avoid that problem arising. It is mostly a concern with my wildlife rehabilitation patients, and I'm sure that the stress of captivity and interaction was a contributing factor in some of their deaths, but generally some common sense husbandry can avoid stress related deaths.

Stress can affect an animal in a lot of different ways, from lowering its resistence to disease to altering its hormone levels. An animal (or person) won't die of stress per se, but can end up failing in health due to conditions that were the caused by stress. In any captive animal that died for reasons other than "old age" or physical injury, stress may have been a contributing factor. Even parasite load - it's been observed that stressed animals have a harder time coping with parasites. (I don't know that this has been specifically documented in tarantulas, but it's been seen in many other animals.) In some cases, protozoans that are usually considered "normal flora" in an animal, under stress can become pathogenic.

So... you won't see an animal die of stress - but stress can cause them to die of a wide range of other causes.

Oh I understand what you meant. I do all I can too for them to find it comfortable living in their terras. I guess taking care of them with respect is the best we could afford. It's really rare in captivity except in LPS; I heard people get scared and left Ts dying by themselves. Lol.

Edit: Didn't see Bill's post. Yeah, what you said does make sense. Now I don't see the reason why I post my question. ;P

Good point Bill; "dying from stress" is indeed a somewhat misleading term or misnomer as it's more death from the direct or indirect effects of the stressor on the body & its processes (you articulated this much better than my rambling trainwreck of a post, lol).

The closest I've seen to an animal literally dying from stress is animals that have heart attacks during stressful situations, but even then it's still more the physiological response to stress that kills them. Fairly common in wild rabbits in the captive environment actually, it's one of the things we really have to look out for when rehabbing older orphans or injured rabbits. But ah, that's me getting a bit O/T, heh.

That's a good way to put it, Roachgirl.

I have heard people talk about T's dying of stress (the way, for example, a rabbit might), but I've never seen it. I kind of think it doesn't actually happen. Unfortunately T's are so non-expressive and so different from us that many times when they die we have no idea why.

But stress can't be a good thing for their health, and I can imagine it interfering with healthy behaviors like eating.