Poec54
Arachnoemperor
- Joined
- Mar 26, 2013
- Messages
- 4,745
I'm saying with very little research and reading it's conceivable that an intelligent person can go buy an OBT as their first T and have no mishaps
True, and some do. But the average person buying a T is inspired by pics/videos of people holding them, and wants a pretty one for themselves to hold. They are usually not looking for the 'orange fury' that an OBT can be. That's why OW's have only started to catch on in the last 10 years. Prior to that, people who liked (and even preferred) OW's were looked down on in the hobby. The fast dashes and short tempers were a turn-off for most experienced tarantula collectors, and why there were only a handful of OW species commonly available until recently. Other than Poecs, OW's were cheap, $5 or $10 for adults. They had to price them like that to get anyone to buy them. If experienced tarantula collectors took decades to warm up to OW's, it really doesn't make a lot of sense to recommend them beginners.
Some beginners will get them anyways, with or without research, and we can only hope that there's no escapes or bites, especially for the people they live with, which is something that always seems to be overlooked in the rush to dive in the deep end: are the people you live with okay with having an OBT loose in the house? Tiptoeing thru the house for weeks, checking every place you sit or lie down, looking in your shoes before you put them on? Lots of fun. What about kids in the house, yours or friends of theirs? All the online research in the world doesn't prepare you for the actual experience of a large, hairy spider running across the floor, up the wall, or up your arm, especially if it's in a bad mood. Beginners tend to panic; they have little, if any, hands-on experience to fall back on. And that's one way things get loose. Then everyone in the house is involved, like it or not. Is it really fair to them? Or is this all about 'Me, me, me'? If you live alone and don't have people over, then you're the only one that has to deal with it. Fine. But that's not the average house or apartment. Are you making the decision for other people too?