Even though I don't collect spiders anymore and believe they should be left alone to do whatever it is they like to do, somebody gave me one of these for my birthday. Apparently, they are plentiful in China and Vietnam. It is classified as "Eurypeima spinicrus." That immediately raised suspicions since in all my years of spider-studying, I have never encountered a naming convention as that. I looked it up and found that it is even more commonly called "Eurypelma spinicrus" and that the name is apparently meaningless.
Google definitions even translates the name as "Preserved spider in a framed box." Works for me.
So what IS this spider then? Not sure. A bird spider of some kind resembling some I have seen in Texas. In fact, I am at least 50% convinced that it is American. The only tarantulas I know of in China and Vietnam are the earth tigers named for the distinctive tiger-like markings on the abdomen:
Malaysian Earth Tiger. Very beautiful spider. Even a chickens-hit like Batlord would have to admit that this is a very lovely spider.
But the boxed-up spider looks more like this:
This is a California bird spider. The only problem is, abdomen is too big. the spider in the box has a small abdomen. Is it just shriveled by the preservation process? No. I've seen a number of living tarantulas that have abdomens like that such as:
A very large tarantula native to Borneo. It is definitely not the spider in the box but resembles it. So I am afraid that, at the moment, I can't say for certain what Eurypelma spinicrus actually is. Until better data come along, I still say it is a bird spider of the American southwest.
Btw, "tarantula" is a misnomer. The real tarantula is a wolf spider native to southern Italy. It was believed that if one bit you, you would fall into a frantic dance or that the venom had to be danced out of your system. In the town of Taranto, such a dance developed and evolved and that is where the spider gets its name. The dance is called the tarantella and is still done in southern Italy and in Argentina.
In reality, the tarantella has been traced back as far as 1100 BCE and was likely a dance of ecstasy, i.e. a frantic dance that allows the dancer to reach state of communing with a god or gods which has its roots in shamanism. The tarantella was like an ancient Roman bacchanalian rite. When the Church moved to stamp it out (no pun intended), the dance was disguised as something brought on by a spider bite or as therapy for a spider bite.
The tarantella is performed with tambourines shook in 4/4 or 6/8 time. Its connections to shamanism is apparent when we realize that most of the voodoo drumbeats done for their ecstatic dances are in 6/8 time--a very primal-sounding beat.
Classic Tarantella Calabrese - Zingarota (Gypsy) - Salvatore Ida - YouTube
Gypsy tarantella.
Lycosa tarantula--the little lady blamed for the dance. Whether the dance was always, in some way, connected to an ancient spider deity as Anansi would be an interesting research project.