Chilean Rose Tarantula

• GeneralOne of the commonest tarantulas in vivaria, for its calm temperament.
• Females can live more than twenty years, while males barely exceed five: they die soon after reaching sexual maturity.
• It defends itself by flicking a cloud of urticating hairs from its abdomen with its hind legs, which cause intense irritation to skin and eyes.
• It can go months without eating, especially before a moult, normal behaviour that often alarms the people who keep them.
• It is probably the commonest tarantula in the pet trade, largely because for years it was collected from the wild on a huge scale.
• Females can live twenty years or more; males far less, dying shortly after reaching maturity.
• It has a reputation for being placid, but it is also famous for its hunger strikes: it can go months without eating with no visible loss of condition.
• It defends itself with urticating hairs that it flicks off its abdomen with its hind legs.
• Its taxonomy has been a tangle: it has accumulated more than a dozen synonyms, among them Grammostola cala, G. spatulata and G. porteri, some of which still circulate in the trade as though they were separate species.

Habitat and environment

Arid scrub and semi-desert

Sources consulted: Wikipedia (es): Grammostola rosea

The pins mark the parks where its presence is documented.