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Animals
One of my hobbies is collecting, growing and breeding tarantulas. I started this hobby when I was still studying at the university (much to the excitement of my roommates in the students hostel). My first tarantula was a birthday present - you can imagine my surprise when I opened the cardbord box and there was this eight legged, hairy, brown monster with a legspan of about 20 cm. It was a Haitian Brown (Phormictopus cancerides). In the literature this particular species is described as being quite aggressive. Not really suitable for a beginner that I was. Well, my tarantula may not have read the same books that I read, because it had obviously never heared that it was supposed to be aggressive and bite . It was an absolutely docile animal and I frequently let it walk on my hands and on the table.
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I got this animal in 1993 as an adult and kept it for almost 7 years before it died during a molt. It was fed one live mid-sized white mouse about every 5 months, which it usually killed within a few seconds by biting it in the neck and injecting venom. The longest time the spider went without taking any food was nearly 9 months and at that stage I was getting rather worried about the health of my pet.
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In the second picture the spider seems to be peering over the edge of the cage to see what I'm up to with all the camera and tripod and all the equipment. Maybe, it was just hungry and thought that there was food. In the center you can get a glimpse of the chelicerae (fangs) which the animal uses to catch pray, inject venom and "chew" the food. Although the chelicerae may not look very impressive, they were sharp needles of a length of about 1.5 cm. Quite long enough to try and avoid being bitten.
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So this is how it all began. My first spider was named "Gundula" by my girlfriend at that time. Now, ten years later I have stopped giving names to the animals. This is partly due to the fact that I'm really bad with keeping names in my brain. Also, since I re-discovered this hobby in early 2003, my collection has grown to well over 100 animals of various species. Too many to have all my pets named. Only one of my spiders has a name: "Monster". Its scientific name is Theraphosa blondi and this species is one of the largest (if not THE largest) on this planet. I just recently heared of the largest spider in Germany being a male of this species and having a legspan of phantastic 43 cm! Hence the nickname for my spider.
If you are still not scared, then enter my spider page. There I have pictures of my spiders, useful information on keeping spiders, a list of the animals currently in my keeping and links to other websites related to the hobby of breeding tarantulas. Nothing for people with arachniphobia!
Go to Spider Pages
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Besides the spiders and scorpions I am currently keeping a few leaf insects (Phyllium giganteum). These insects are a marvellous example of mimikry as they resemble the leafs of living plants including the dried edges.
Go to Insect Pages
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Apart from animals with 8 or 6 legs I also keep two species without any legs at all! Two snakes keep the other creepy crawlies company. Its a Milk Snake and a California Kingsnake, which I call "Nobody" and "Blacky". Unfortunately, Nobody is quite shy and most of the time lives buried in the soil of the terrarium or in its hiding place. The latter is a plastic pot with a fern in it. Nobody squeezes into the pot through the water drain hole in the bottom!
Go to Reptile Pages
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Plants
The other big passion of mine is collecting and breeding plants. It all started with a rather large collection of cacti. In my best times I had far more than 150 cacti in my collection plus a huge number of seedlings. This numer declined when I went to New Zealand in 1996 and it since has not got up to its previus level. At the moment I focus more on my spider breeding project.
Besides a few cacti I currently keep quite a few other exotic plants such other succulent plants like Living Stones, numerous orchids and a few Lotus plants.
To see a selection of my plants collection
Click here to go to my Botany Pages
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