Tarantulas finally home at Canterbury Museum

Media Release

2 October 2013

Tarantulas finally home at Canterbury Museum

Four tarantula spiders have made Canterbury Museum their new home today.
The tarantulas have been in quarantine at the University of Canterbury since the September 2010 earthquake and were cleared for re-homing in the Museum’s Discovery Centre this morning.

Curator Natural History at the Museum and spider expert, Cor Vink, is delighted to have the gentle giants back at the Museum after such a long period of time.

“The tarantulas are a favourite of many Museum visitors and the public have been very keen for their return. It took a while to get everything right for them and hopefully they will continue to spark an interest in spiders, insects and other arthropods,” he says.

The spider’s revamped enclosure has been designed to provide the eight-legged beauties with optimum safety and security amid an environment that is the closest interpretation of their natural habitats in Mexico and South America. Tarantulas (the spider family Theraphosidae) are found in warmer parts of the world and do not occur in New Zealand; however, New Zealand certainly has plenty of other interesting spiders. There are approximately 2000 spider species found in New Zealand, with 97 percent of them found nowhere else in the world and only just over half of them have been named.

The tarantula species at the Museum include a Mexican Redknee, Stripeleg, Peruvian pinktoe and Chilean Rose, and will no doubt be a popular attraction for children of all ages.

ENDS

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