Bug Zoo! With Pictures

Mr. Nivose says: Steph's school has an entomology club. We joined it, and volunteered for Bug Zoo duties. The Zoo is a small room a little bit wider than a closet with cages and tanks of various bugs*. Currently they are all shelved on one long wall. The other long wall contains empty cages and related equipment. The door is on one narrow wall with room left only for a currently unused large aquarium (literally an aquarium, set up for water - as apposed to a glass tank containing terrestrial life). The far end's narrow wall has a shaded window and a large shelf for gear/equipment/notes.

More than half the wall of cages is Tarantulas. One to a cage.

That's Steph holding Rosie.

We have an album of more pictures here LINK TO GALLERY. Including more pictures of us holding Rosie. Rosie is a Rose Haired Tarantula. So named I assume because of the reddish color on their backside (not that you can see it well in any of the pictures). It has been mentioned that with a name like that many pet Rose Hairs are named Rosie. She is pretty docile, we don't handle most of the Tarantulas. But we do feed them live crickets every week as well as water them.
Some eat more than the others, but most are a little slowed down now (for the winter I assume).

Last week when we went in one of the Tarantulas had molted! It was the first time in the months we've been doing this that I'd seen it. We took down his cage to feed and water him and...there were two of him. There's a couple of pictures, including an underside so you can see his teeth, as well as one showing the hatch in his back that opens. It was quite an amazing time.

One of the Tarantulas is a BirdEater. It is quite big. I believe it was Shiloh-chan's previously. Many of the bugs are donated pets. There's a couple of pictures of the BirdEater, including one with my hand outside the tank for scale. It's the most likely of the tarantulas that we have to eat it's cricket right away.

A couple months ago we lost both of our WolfSpiders (they died, they didn't get out and wander the school), which are not web makers. They look and act a lot like small tarantulas (which makes them fairly large spiders nonetheless). They also would eat as soon as dinner was served.

There are also a large number of Widows. Western Widows though, not casually distinguishable from Black Widows. It is a tiny bit unnerving to open their jars and feed them crickets. But it mostly goes well. It's hard to over come the idea that what they really want is to get out and bite me. But part of tending all the bugs is misting the cages. And the mister is a good way to herd any Widow that isn't just running scared to the bottom of her cage. We don't actually have any pictures of them, but in the one picture of the room itself you can see in the middle a hamster cage - sawdust, weave nest, water bottle, hamster wheel. In that cage is a Widow. She's also the most regular eater of the half dozen or so Widows that we tend. It's actually quite entertaining. She also seems to rest in the hamster nest ball.

The rest of the Widows are in glass jars of various sizes except for one that is in a canister for tennis balls.

Our scorpion died earlier this month. In the few months we were tending him he wasn't eating much, and rarely came out of his coconut home. In the gallery there are pictures of me holding him after he died, as well as one of him (dead) in his cage with his coconut. Before he died it was pretty clear that he wasn't doing well. Also he had recently had a trip to Reno, and just possibly he partied a little too hard there.

Just this week our Praying Mantis also passed. She was beautiful and huge. She had been my favorite bug for a while, and while it is sad to loose her it is notable that December is quite late for a Mantis to survive to. She molted twice while we had her, she was quite small when we got her late this summer. It's amazing how huge she got as a final stage adult. She also had quite an appetite and was better fed than any of the other cricket eaters. Many times she would eat her whole cricket while we were still there attending to other bugs and I would give her another which she would start on right away. The pictures in the Gallery of her are when she was not quite dead yet, but no longer able to stand. We didn't name her, but she'll always be special to me.

As numerous as the widows and tarantulas may be. They are easily outnumbered by the two types of roaches. The discoid roaches (pictured in the gallery enjoying their fruit) and the Hissing Cockroaches.


That's me holding a Hissing Cockraoch. They're actually a lot of fun. They're large and cranky, well, they Hiss. They don't seem to crazy about being picked up, but they are kind of lazy and once you have them they won't do much to get away or help you once you are done holding them. They hold on surprisingly well for bugs their size.

The discoid roaches are if anything even more fond of their food. Both types also get small dashes of fish food. The discoid roaches are used for racing in childrens outreach programs. There's a small cage of painted roaches that the kids get to pick out and race. They are quite quick.

One of the most amazing bugs is the millipede, he's huge! There's more pictures of him in the gallery, to get a good idea of the scale of him. The past two weeks he's been very thirsty and has come out when we've misted him. He drinks for a long time. Being from out of state I can understand this, it is very dry here. He holds on to things very very well. I've not seen him move as quick as you might expect him to be able to. But he has a small cage, so it might be tough to get up to speed.

There's a couple of cages of beetles. One picture of them. They like their food very much. One of the cages also has grubs and little beetles.

Steph and I also pop-in on Holidays when we can to make sure everybody has holiday cheer and gets a little extra food if they've already finished what they've got. Otherwise there's 2 feedings a week. We do the Tuesday one, which is also cricket day. On Fridays it's just fruit and water.


-Mr. Nivose


Mrs. Nivose says: We joined the entomology club at the start of the school year mainly to help take care of the bugs in the zoo. We also though it would be a good place to keep bugs we caught since we don't really have room for them at home, but we haven't caught a lot of bugs yet. I don't know a whole lot about bugs, but it is fun watching them and getting to know them.

There's not a whole lot of variety in the bug zoo- mostly tarantulas, roaches and black widows. Too many black widows in my opinion. But there's also a wind scorpion which is a small spider (not really a scorpion) that lives in southern Colorado. They burrow under the sand. I never see the wind scorpion out and about in its cage, so I have no idea if it is still alive. There were two, but one died before it was moved into a cage. We didn't take a picture of the wind scorpion because there isn't really anything to see.

There have been other spiders, too. There was an orb spider for a few weeks, but it died. It had narrow brown and white stripes all over its body. There were two wolf spiders for a while, but they also died. They were fun to watch at feeding time. Peter would throw the crickets into their cages and the wolf spiders would see the crickets and pounce on them so fast! A lot of spiders only live for a year or two, so it's not a big surprise that they often don't live long in the zoo. A wolf spider crossed our path once when Peter and I were hiking in the hills around Horsetooth Resevoir, and once at night when we were out looking for frogs in Boulder. They're pretty big spiders. Not tarantula sized, but leg to leg, easily bigger than my palm.

The black widows (Whitney says they're actually Western Widows- a close relative of the black widow) are my least favorite. I think we had 8 in there at one point and are now down to 5 or 6. One of them was a male that Peter caught near the laundry room of our apartment. We didn't know what it was at first because the males have a different color pattern than the females, but the people in Whitney's lab identified it for us and we left it in the zoo. We watched one of the widows get very, very big, then she got smaller and smaller and now she's dead. So, they seem to life out their life span then die. We keep a close eye on them though to make sure they haven't laid eggs. The last thing we need is an infestation of baby widows. Peter feeds and waters the widows. Sometimes I will give them their squirt of water, but usually Peter takes care of them. When he starts feeding these spiders I get either hot or cold and slightly nauseated. I'm more comfortable around them than I used to be, but still prefer to stay away from them.

The spiders get fed crickets, and we put water in their dishes and mist their cages. The tarantulas don't like being misted very much and start running away from the mist. The smarter ones run into their little houses. The roaches, millipede and darkling beetles eat fruits and veggies- mostly apples, oranges and cabbage- and get water and mist as well. I like the darkling beetles. They just sort of clunk around in their cage, crawling over everything and falling over. The seem to spend their time eating, crawling around and trying to mate. Judging from how many baby darkling beetles there are, I'd have to say that a lot of the mating works out for them.

The hissing roaches are pretty boring. They hiss sometimes and that's about it. The discoid roaches are a little more entertaining and I think they're cuter than the hissing roaches- at least when they're adults and have wings. The discoid roaches run very fast and get very excited about their food. They also burrow into the ground stuff of their cage. Other than that they don't do much.

Sometimes the bugs go on trips. Some have been to Reno, some have been to the local farmers market (touch the tarantula for free if you buy something!) and there are other outings to schools and fairs.

I like feeding and watching the bugs with Peter. It continues to be fun to get to know these creatures together.

If any of you come visit we can take you to the zoo!

-Mrs. Nivose


*I am using "bug" in the vulgar - anything generically creepy crawly- and not in the scientific "true bugs" of the order Hemiptera, nor in the sometimes argued "just insects" context.