Invertebrates - Share your pets without a backbone

[Ribombee]

WARNING

This thread will contain pictures of spiders, insects, scorpions, and other invertebrates! If you have a fear of ANY of them, it's in your best interest to not proceed.

 

Since inverts freak some people out, I thought it might be best to have our own discussion thread where we can show off our 6+ legged (or no legged!) beauties, talk about their care, and generally bask in the pure awesomeness of all animals without an internal skeleton!

 

Spiders, insects, scorpions, amblypygids, snails, or whatever other cool invertebrate pets you have are fair discussion topic. You're welcome to discuss wild invertebrates, too!

 

Please, if you hate invertebrates, just don't post. This isn't the place for it. Keep things respectful. This is all about love for our other friends! We know who really rules the world, and it's sure not us mammals!

Edited April 18, 2014 by harlequinraven

[Banyanpan]

Don't have any pets, but spiders get way more hate than they deserve. They're really cool and some of them are kind of cute (jumping spiders).

Whip scorpions are also really neat.

[RWyvern]

I flippin' love any and all invertebrates. I currently have four as pets - a female house spider who is five or six years old, and antlion who makes a mess on my shelf every time it decides its trap needs a little tidying up and most recently a really tiny brown praying mantis that looks like an ant. I'll have to see if I can get photos of all three. The fourth one is a mole cricket my dad caught, which now spends his days either screeching away in his enclosure or causing the weeds that grow there to mysteriously disappear by dragging them down. I don't see him any more and probably never will until his enclosure's emptied out.

 

Spiders are easily one of my favourite classes. I used to keep and breed a lot. I am not joking when I say that at least three thousand spiders have been in my care. Several hundred came from one really strange looking spider who, to my knowledge, didn't have a male in her enclosure yet she laid fertile egg sac after fertile egg sac. She was so productive I eventually had to release her outside.

 

Then I collected a whole bunch of flower spiders, the laid about two egg sacs each and those hatched into three hundred or so spiderlings which got out all over my room and I spent two hours recollecting them :u

 

I have also kept a redback, but she laid an egg sac as well and I had to release her. Huntsmen spiders are among my favourites - they're the largest spiders we get here. I love holding them and have kept several dozen. Earlier this year I removed easily one of the largest ones I have ever seen from the house and I would have kept it, only I didn't have a spare enclosure. Daddy long-legs spiders are also common - there's a few dozen around the house that help keep the fly population down.

 

Aside from spiders, I have also kept over three hundred stick insects (they wouldn't stop reproducing!), several mantises of varying species, psuedoscorpions, a rainforest scorpion, a yabbie who moulted into a bright blue one (much to my friend's, who gave him to me, envy: 'mine are only brown!'), all kinds of pond crustaceans and one hydra (one of my favourite invertebrates, ever) who multiplied into about five and they all multiplied and their offspring multiplied until I had about thirty in a single petri dish. Due to a shortage of food in the winter I had to release them all. I seriously regret it now - five years later and I have never found another.

 

I've also kept a variety of beetles. They're more finicky but my longest lived one was a rhinoceros beetle the aforementioned friend gave me. I've also caught several sizeable beetles that look like a stag beetle, but lacked the impressive mandibles. They typically had two colour schemes - either iredescent green or an iredescent purplish red. Perhaps they were females, but to my knowledge stag beetles don't come this far south. They only showed up for two years, too.

 

I also kept a large mantispid which emerged from a wolf spider's egg sac, as well as a lone bull ant. She was a major worker, a true 'inch' ant, and I kept her on top of a warm surface as without her colony, she'd have quickly perished from cold. She lived for around a month, by which point she had become really used to human interaction and would even wait at one corner of the enclosure for her weekly cricket.

 

Probably kept a whole lot more, but this post is getting long. I'll try and get a picture of my three inverts to show later~

Edited April 18, 2014 by rampaging wyvern

[sh20000sh]

I raised beetle, but I don't now.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_rhinoceros_beetle

[Nectaris]

I don't have any right now, but I have been strongly considering getting a tarantula.

[JavaTigress]

I think it is funny how in those old monster movies about giant spiders it is nearly ALWAYS a tarantula who is the spider 'star'. Are they just that easy to handle, besides being non-venomous to humans for the most part?

[Nectaris]

I think it is funny how in those old monster movies about giant spiders it is nearly ALWAYS a tarantula who is the spider 'star'. Are they just that easy to handle, besides being non-venomous to humans for the most part?

I suspect it is because they are larger to begin with, so it is easier for special effects, especially back then when it was harder to create special effects. Also, because they are already large, they tend to look a little more natural when super-sized.

Edited April 18, 2014 by Nectaris

[Fightandspawn]

I have a very fat tarantula in the living room, and his name is Benny.

[grimace]

Ooooh yesgooood

 

Right now I have 3 colonies of roaches, a few red spotted assassin bugs, 17 emporer scorps, a rose hair, a jerusalem cricket, and a deathstalker.

[Ribombee]

Don't have any pets, but spiders get way more hate than they deserve. They're really cool and some of them are kind of cute (jumping spiders).

Whip scorpions are also really neat.

Tailless whip scorpions (ambypigids) are AWESOME! My friend has one. He has everything. LOL. True scorpion, true whip scorpions, insects, tons of tarantulas, six-eyed sand spiders...

 

I think it is funny how in those old monster movies about giant spiders it is nearly ALWAYS a tarantula who is the spider 'star'. Are they just that easy to handle, besides being non-venomous to humans for the most part?

That's part of the reason, plus being large. It makes it easier to film them and make them look even larger. Some species are pretty aggressive, but all three of mine (I got an A. hentzi!) are generally easy to handle.

Edited May 24, 2014 by harlequinraven

[grimace]

Just got a Poecilotheria D

[octopi]

AAH AAH AAH INVERTEBRATES

 

I don't have any right now but I want some. Not sure though because I'm pretty sure I'll end up forgetting about and neglecting them ;; Definitely getting a hermit crab or five at some point in the future though.

 

(Also I really don't understand people when they're like. "Oh puppies are cute because they have huge eyes and they're tiny and fuzzy!" And then you show them a jumping spider and they run screaming. Are cuteness standards only applicable to mammals or something?)

[TCA]

I really love moths and have been thinking I eventually want to try raising some silkmoths.

[edwardelricfreak]

Moths are one of my favorite things everrrr. Dunno if I would ever keep any as pets, though I might in the future. I really love playing with the ones that fly in from outside, though! They just seem so derpy and cute.

 

I also love snails! I think I'll definitely have some pet snails in the future. They're all so cuuuute and squishy! >w<

 

I've considered getting a pet tarantula, but I don't think I will. o3o I might get a jumping spider, though! They're the best. c: So adorable and fuzzy.

 

I really like dragonflies, too, but I don't think I'd ever have them as pets. I'd rather they be free to live their little dragonfly lives. c:

[Moeru]

I currently have an aquarium (about 40cm long, so I suspect approx. 7 gallons/26-28 liters?) that is set up just for cherry shrimp (and non-cherry Neocaridina davidi wild type)... I do have one corydoras catfish in there (his buddy died :c) and a single red ramshorn snail and a single pond snail... but lately the pond snail has been laying egg clusters all over the glass!! Where are you getting those eggs from?! Can ramshorn and pond snails hybridize?? >o<

 

I've kept various stag and rhinoceros beetles, my favorites were my "Rainbow Kuwagata", Mueller's Stag Beetle (P. muelleri) grubs which I raised to adulthood--the adults live up to 18 months on top of the two years they spend as a grub! I believe they're originally from the forests around Queensland, Australia. They are really charming and beautiful little beetles, slow moving but quite defensive of their home. I had a male who would open his pincers at me any time I took the lid off his box (but he never actually pinched me).

 

I've kept a few land hermit crabs in my youth but last time I tried, the crab was disturbed during molting and did not survive. :C

Currently I've been interested in freshwater inverts for the aquarium such as crayfish and shrimp. The varieties of Caridina and Neocaridina shrimp especially are very beautiful and their body shape is smooth and cute, rather than spiked and gnarly and scary like the larger crayfish species. Even my bug-wary girlfriend likes my shrimp and the little 1-mm babies!

 

Some color varieties of Neocaridina shrimp (the adults get to about 1 inch long!)

Red Cherry:

 

Yellow, or Yellow Cherry:

 

Red Rili (Rilis also come in black, orange and blue now!)

 

Snowball (because their eggs are white!)

 

and the lovely but delicate, Blue Velvet:

[Ribombee]

Moths are one of my favorite things everrrr. Dunno if I would ever keep any as pets, though I might in the future. I really love playing with the ones that fly in from outside, though! They just seem so derpy and cute.

 

I also love snails! I think I'll definitely have some pet snails in the future. They're all so cuuuute and squishy! >w<

 

I've considered getting a pet tarantula, but I don't think I will. o3o I might get a jumping spider, though! They're the best. c: So adorable and fuzzy.

 

I really like dragonflies, too, but I don't think I'd ever have them as pets. I'd rather they be free to live their little dragonfly lives. c:

Just got a Poecilotheria D

P. metallica? If so, I'm jealous! Those are gorgeous tarantulas!

 

I really love moths and have been thinking I eventually want to try raising some silkmoths.

Oh man, silkmoths are too cute for words. They are like stuffed animals in insect form.

[grimace]

P. metallica? If so, I'm jealous! Those are gorgeous tarantulas!

haha I wish. Regalis ;3c

[Ribombee]

haha I wish. Regalis ;3c

Still pretty. The most exotic I have is an A. hentzi. LOL. No arboreals.

[TCA]

Guys it's army cutworm moth migration season and I must be catching at least a couple of them a day and throwing them outside. They're so fuzzy and teeny~

[Ribombee]

LOL yes, noctuids are usually pretty fuzzy. They're always around my apartment building's light in the spring and summer. I must have at least ten different species in my collection.

[Fishkeeper]

I used to have Madagascar hisser roaches. Kept them in a tank under my bed. Very neat, wingless, slow-running, low-care pets. They bred at one point, which was awesome both for me and for the schoolteacher who got most of the babies for the school.

 

Anyone know what kind of roach is small, roundish, dark-colored, wingless, and lives under rocks? They burrow into the dirt when uncovered, and I've never seen one over half an inch long. They have flattened head armor and make no noise or stink that I'm aware of. The pest control guy we use doesn't know what they are, which makes me think they aren't a pest. Well, that and it ran up my sleeve before he could get a very good look. I'm in Central Texas, if it helps. I love those little buggers... They're really funny and kind of adorable.

 

Oh, and I have a semi-pet American cockroach in my room. He's almost two inches long, black, and probably eats spilled fish food. I leave him alone because I don't mind him.

Our house is over a hundred years old and has hollow walls with no insulation. We get bugs. Because of that, we do have a few roaches... And they no longer fear me. Now and then at night a roach will just tootle his way across the floor, stop to look up at me, and then keep going.

The babies like our bathroom. They amuse me because they look like someone drew a cartoon bug and then it just got up and ran away.

 

Why all the roaches?

One ran across the floor and reminded me.

We don't have an infestation, just a few resident roaches.

I catch them and put them outside when I find them indoors. Aside from the black one in my room, he's way too fast and I have too many good hiding places for roaches.

 

On the subject of moths- I LOVE sphinx moths. They're large enough to hold and feel some weight, and they tend to be pretty docile. Catch one, cup your hand over it for a minute or two, and it'll just sit there and tremble its wings as long as you don't frighten it. And they're so soft...

I wish there was a foot-long species of moth that would live for a decade or so. I would totally beg for one as a pet.

 

You ever hatch luna moth cocoons? I suggest it. You can get the mail-order, and all you have to do is keep them in a bug net until they hatch. After that you can look at them for a little while and then let them free... If you let them out of an upstairs window at night, they almost seem to glow as they fly. It's amazing.

 

Oh, and we raised io moths from caterpillars once because the neighbors found some on their oak tree and gave them to us. Beautiful green finger-sized caterpillars with spots and spines- really nice to watch. And when they grew up... I was 6, I think, and each one was easily the size of my hand with its wings halfway folded. That was epic. Somewhere we have a picture of my little brother holding one and staring at it like it's a bunch of nanobots or something.

 

Me wuvs moffs.

[Ribombee]

It could be any number of native species of roaches. Without a picture or a specimen, I can't give you more details.

 

American roaches are actually originally from Africa. In many parts of America, they can't live outdoors in our winters, so they have to live indoors. Letting them out won't help. They are an invasive species, and they are definitely a pest species. In fact, all our pest species are non native. Our native roaches aren't pests and stay outdoors.

[Fishkeeper]

I can no longer find any to photograph- not sure why. They just haven't been around for a couple of years... I suspect the dry cycle we're in may have considerably lowered the population or made them stay underground.

 

I know putting them outside won't help much, but it's more of a 'go under the house, roach, and stay out of our rooms' thing. Also, the cat kills them and leaves them on the floor otherwise.

[Ribombee]

My old cat used to bring us live crickets, minus one hind leg. LOL! Our great hunter, that one. I keep my three cats out of my home office because it contains all the cat-tempting pets (the arthropods, gecko, and sugar gliders).

 

I'm excited! Two of my tarantulas moulted, including my juvenile! Albus may be big enough to sex from the moult, so I'll hopefully be able to tell of Albus is a witch instead of a wizard. Haha! Dashie is still too little to tell, but it had moulted three times since we got it.

[Snowie]

When I was in elementary school we has lizards and stuff like that in the class room, and we fed them crickets and meal worms, but me and a friend like them better so we went and bought some. one of our meal worms grew into a beetle. I have also cared for a lot f slugs and worms, which is about all we could find in the garden. right now we have a queen ant, who laid eggs, but we don't know if they will hatch, because there is no male.