What's the average lifespan of a Phormictopus cancerides(and others)?

Sam_Peanuts

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Apr 21, 2010
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I've had a female Phormictopus cancerides that I got as a juvie for around 10 years now and I was wondering how long they live in average(assuming there's enough data on them)?

I tried searching the forum, but didn't manage to find anything which made me wonder if there's some place where we can find that kind of information about other species?
 

Poec54

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Lifespans aren't known on most T's. It's only in the past few years, as their popularity increases worldwide, that much attention at all is being paid them, even by taxonomists. There's little, if any, money in studying them. Funding for animals almost always goes to something besides spiders. The bites aren't a health issue, and countries where most live have a lot bigger concerns. In other countries, people are in and out of the hobby so recordkeeping is limited and fragmented.

Species from dry climates often mature in 8-10 years and live at total of 20-30 years (females). In the wet tropics, males can mature in 8-15 months, females in 2-5 years. Total lifespan for a tropical female is probably 8-15 years.
 

Sam_Peanuts

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I kind of expected that, but was hoping we'd at least have data for some of them.

Thanks for the lifespan guidelines, that's good to know, at least I have something to compare my experience to.
 

Poec54

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When you have long lived animals, and people in and out of the hobby (for a variety of reasons), it's hard to assemble records on longevity. Plus T's have exploded in popularity in the last 10 years, so a lot of people haven't had theirs die of old age yet. While tarantulas have been sold in pet stores for about 50 years, it's only recently that most people are catching on to what good pets they make, and how much variety there is in the species. In many ways this is a 'new' hobby. We don't know how many species there are, or even have the right names on many of them. There's far more that we don't know, than what we do know. To me, that makes it exciting. Each of us can discover things and make contributions.
 
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jigalojey

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Dec 23, 2012
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When you have long lived animals, and people in and out of the hobby (for a variety of reasons), it's hard to assemble records on longevity. Plus T's have exploded in popularity in the last 10 years, so a lot of people haven't had theirs die of old age yet. While the tarantulas have been sold in pet stores for about 50 years, it's only recently that most people are catching on to what good pets they make, and how much variety there is in the species. In many ways this is a 'new' hobby. We don't know how many species there are, or even have the right names on many of them. There's far more that we don't know, than what we do know. To me, that makes it exciting. Each of us can discover things and make contributions.
Agreed, a new hobby is much more exiting and way more fun, the hobby is real intense down here right now with new stuff being dug up every month lmao.
 

advan

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I am not sure the average but Andrew Smith has a 24 year old female.
 

Ultum4Spiderz

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my G Porteri is life span is unknown but id imagine it is very old.
It was wild caught I got it full grown (5-10 years) owned it 10 years. Easily 16 years +

I only kept Ts for 12 years so I got no lifespan records , none of my Ts raised as slings died yet of old age.
 
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Poec54

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my G Porteri is life span is unknown...it was wild caught I got it full grown.

That's a good point. The hobby's first few decades were mostly w/c adults of unknown age. Slings started to have a market value in the 1990's (prior to that, no one in their right mind wanted a 1/2" spiderling of any species).
 
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