Best place to buy tarantulas for framing

Ken the Bug Guy supplies live invertebates of all kinds, many tarantulas. I am sure some pass on why not contact him about supplying you with dead specimins?. Web address same as name.

Yes, winged, they do have an impressive potential life span for an almost-spider (ever count their legs carefully?) don't they? I think the record is half a century but maybe that has even changed since I was more involved with them. I was shocked when I found this out as well as most pet stores will give you a 15-20 year estimate on an average "old" female. This might be true because interest is lost in them over time or as a result of bad care, but I know for certain that this is not the full potential. I used to keep a wide variety of tarantula myself, I have just a few now as I was required to thin down when my spider-phobic wife came into the picture. She graciously allows me to keep those I still have despite her legitimate fear, albeit an irrational phobia, but they definitely moved out of the bedroom and into an out of sight location, lol. I reared all of mine from slings, the trendy term for spiderlings. It's a lot of fun to watch them change as they transition from instar to instar. Better chances of getting girls this was too. Because males live so much shorter lives they are more often available when you are looking at adult examples and are also therefor supposed to be much cheaper.

A lot of breeders will secretly retain their females and sell off "unsexed" juveniles that have actually been sexed and sorted already. Rather dishonest. You can sex a baby tarantula when they aren't very large at all, just a couple of inches, with great accuracy if you cup it and turn it over- males have fusillae about where the apex of the leg unions are that can be spotted easily with a handlens. But most people won't manhandle their tarantula (for good reason, don't recommend it for you and your tarantula's safety in general) or even know what to look for so they are sold males as either "unsexed" or sometimes even sold as females when they clearly are not. I even once had a guy trying to sell me a female tarantula that had mating hooks on his pedipalps. And this guy clearly knew what he was doing, especially the part where the he marked up the cost to $100.00 more than what the male counterpart would fetch on the market.

Tarantulas are an interesting thing- lots of unknowns available in the pet market with just purported names but no definite description despite being well represented in the pet market for years. Pamphobeteus sp. "Platyomma" which might be Vitalius or something else entirely is a commonly available example of this phenomena. It's not like nursery plants where they do have real latin names and are just not correctly applied if used at all; many tarantulas are only known by the pet trade names. They really beg for some extensive collecting and taxonomic research as I'm sure a great number of them could be resolved and named or renamed as required. Not sure why they get so little scientific attention in the invertebrate community, they are really noticeable which usually means well studied.

I really recommend getting in touch with some of the big breeders and dealers- you would likely be able to pick up atleast recently deceased males. Swift's Inverts, PetCenterUSA, Ken The Bug Guy are all big breeders/importers in the US that might be able to sell you dead adults. Keeping in mind the short relative life of males and the fact that tarantulas are gentle lovers in general, they would all likely have deceased males throughout the year. All of those listed have excellent stock so you might be able to get some very beautiful specimens. There are more too of course, those are just names that strike me as big national dealers. If you are in Europe you will have an even easier time getting a hold of breeders.