What Food do Tarantulas eat?
Tarantulas are carnivores, which mean they eat live food such as insects, small rodents, frogs and toads, and in some cases even small birds.
In captivity, your pet tarantula will be very happy on a regular diet of gut-loaded insects. Crickets are a very common food source for spider owners and are available at most pet stores.
Most species of tarantula will only need to eat two or three times a week, depending on their size and growth rate. Click here to learn more about individual Tarantula species size, growth rates, and feeding requirements.
How Do Tarantulas Eat?
Like all spiders, the Tarantula is incapable of eating solid food, which means they need to turn their meals into ‘soup’ in order to ingest it. Tarantulas bite their prey and inject a venom to paralyze the target. Once this is done the spider will then secretes digestive enzymes that liquefy the subject allowing the tarantula to drink the prey through straw-like parts of it’s mouth.
Gut-Loading
One major advantage of breeding your own insects, or buying store bought and keeping them alive for a few days before feeding them to your Tarantula is that you can gut-load them before they are eaten.
Gut-loading simply means that you get to choose what to feed the insects before you feed them to your spider. This means you can stuff them with nutrition dense foods making them a far healthier meal for your pet Tarantula.
Capturing wild insects, while free, is always risky as you have no idea what they have eaten, what toxins or pesticides they may have come into contact with before you caught them.
Removing Old Food
You will want to check your enclosure daily, and if there is food left over the next day remove it and wait a day or two before putting more in.
Tarantulas are interesting when it comes to diet. You can’t ever overfeed your pet, so don’t worry about how much they eat. On the flip-side, it’s also not uncommon for tarantuals to ge for extended periods of time without eating, so don’t get worried if your spider hasn’t eaten for a few days.
Water
Provide fresh water for your pet daily, but don’t be overly concerned if you don’t see them drinking, a lot of the water they need comes from their food. If they need more, they will go drink.
Pay careful attention to the spiders abdomen, especially during periods where the spider isn’t eating – a shrivelled abdomen can indicate that the tarantula is dehydrated.
It’s a good idea to try more food at the same time, just in case – remembering that the spider can also get water from the food it eats too.
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