{"id":81701,"date":"2025-08-14T08:11:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T08:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/81701\/"},"modified":"2025-08-14T08:11:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T08:11:07","slug":"big-and-hairy-and-looking-for-love-but-they-are-not-after-you-deseret-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/81701\/","title":{"rendered":"Big and hairy and looking for love \u2014\u00a0but they are not after you \u2013 Deseret News"},"content":{"rendered":"

They are hairy and the size of a baseball, and if you live in the Southwest, you may seem them roaming around. <\/p>\n

It is mating season for the tarantula, and the males are on the lookout for a female friend. That includes southern Utah, where you may see them out and about.<\/p>\n

But even though it is a tarantula, they are relatively harmless, with venom less potent than a common wasp.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a wild animal \u2014 it doesn\u2019t want to be picked up and loved and hugged,\u201d said Dan McCamish, a senior environmental scientist with California State Parks. \u201cIn general, the species is very docile, but if you were to handle one, they could bite you.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to an in article in USA Today<\/a>, these seemingly scary eight-legged arachnids are a valuable part of the the ecological system.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn truth, they\u2019re gentle, ecologically valuable animals,\u201d McCamish said. \u201cMostly they\u2019re interested in escaping from confrontations \u2014 especially with something they know could squish them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here are some simple facts to know about tarantulas and why you should care about them:<\/p>\n

Females can live up to 20 years or more.Males only live up to five to eight years.They feed on a variety of insects that include mosquitos and grasshoppers.<\/p>\n

Typically, tarantulas live in arid regions, which includes southwestern areas of Utah but can range as far north as Cache County.<\/p>\n

They mostly keep to themselves and their nests are in the ground, so hikers and campers don\u2019t see a lot of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs with most things that live in the desert in the summer, they\u2019re generally nocturnal,\u201d McCamish said. \u201cSo unless you\u2019re out in the middle of the night, which I don\u2019t recommend for safety purposes, you likely won\u2019t see them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"A tarantula on display at \u201cThe Power of Poison\u201d exhibit at the Natural History Museum of Utah in Salt Lake City on Friday, Oct. 14, 2016. | Laura Seitz, Deseret News Are they coming for you?<\/p>\n

No. They are not. They want to be left alone and prefer to hide. <\/p>\n

Tarantulas may be your best defense against pests like mosquitoes or beetles. <\/p>\n

Utah has three distinct species of these misunderstood creatures: Those include the Salt Lake County brown, the Grand Canyon black tarantula and the Arizona desert tarantula.<\/p>\n

Then, in the fall, the weather starts to shift and they can become more active. \u201cThey generally wait for the first fall seasonal rain \u2014 they really respond to the late summer warmth and the increase in moisture,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

So, increased movement by the tarantulas in Utah is not an invasion. The little crawlers are just looking for a mate.<\/p>\n

\"\"A tarantula walks in the grass near the base of Topaz Mountain on Saturday, Sept. 17, 2011, 50 miles northwest of Delta, Utah. | Jim Urquhart, Associated Press <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"They are hairy and the size of a baseball, and if you live in the Southwest, you may…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[5817,3125,79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-81701","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-news-division","9":"tag-news-feed-local","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}