Description
Scientific Name: Avicularia juruensis & Avicularia urticans (Junior Synonym)
Common names: Peruvian Pink Toe
Another beautiful Pink Toe species, the Peruvian Pink Toe grows larger than your average pink toe and is much larger than A purpurea – Purple Pink Toe for example, but also has a beautiful light purple sheen on it’s carapace and all over it’s super-fuzzy body as well as dark purples on it’s abdomen, making it a very attractive tarantula. Still docile for the most part, they can be a bit defensive and have been known to bite a careless keeper, but we have handled our full grown female unintentionally when re-housing and she has never shown any aggression at all. When disturbing or trying to move this species, it won’t flick urticating bristles at you, but instead will turn and start waving it’s abdomen in your direction, trying to brush urticating bristles on to you. If you keep bothering it, you may fall victim to a squirt of poo in your direction as a message that you are really not welcome…
Even at full size, these tarantulas are not comfortable walking on us, we find with most pink toe species that our body heat or skin texture seems to feel alien to them and they tend to walk as though they were trying to find something in the dark as they try find anything to walk on but you. Pink Toes are also known to suddenly jump to freedom so always work on a large table or close to the ground in case a larger specimen should jump and fall to it’s death. Remember Tarantulas are super-fragile and a fall of any decent height will kill your spider.
As with all Avicularia / Caribena / Ybyrpora species, Avicularia urticans requires an arboreal enclosure with humidity in the region of 70 to 80% but with good cross-flow ventilation to ensure that air is always fresh and clean. They web like crazy and will require structure in the upper areas of the enclosure to anchor their webbing. If you don’t supply any structure, they will probably web the heck out the enclosure anyway until they form a suitable hammock style den to hunt from, but take care thay they don’t web up any ventilation holes that will prevent them from getting fresh air.
They are really great eaters and also have some pretty explosive feeding responses, in fact most keepers get bitten because they are cleaning the enclosure too gently and fool the spider in to thinking a careless finger is a potential meal.
We absolutely adore all Pink Toe species and as far as we’re concerned everybody should own them.
Taxonomical changes to Avicularia species:
This is very annoying with the Avicularia species as scientists are constantly classifying and re-classifying the different species, but these are the latest changes to the species.
- A.versicolor is now Caribena versicolor
- A.laeta is now Caribena laeta
- A.rickwesti is now Antillena rickwesti
- A.sooretama is now Ybyrapora sooretama
- A.gamba is now Ybyrapora gamba
- A.diversipes is now Ybyrapora diversipes
- A.avicularia variegata is now A.variegata
- A.bicegoi is now A.variegata
- A.velutina is now A.avicularia
- A.exilis is now A.avicularia
- A.ancylochyra is now A.avicularia
- A.cuminami is now A.avicularia
- A.nigrotaeniata is now A.avicularia
- A.urticans is now A.juruensis
- A.affinis is now Euathlus affinis
- A.subvulpina is now Grammostola subvulpina
- A.aymara is now Thrixopelma aymara
- A.leporina is now Iridopelma leporina
- A.plantaris is now Iridopelma plantaris