Spider Tales 5: Tarantula and tarantella
Tarantula. A famous word for a famous animal. Everyone knows what a tarantula is: it's a massive, impressive, hairy spider. This Tliltocatl albopilosum is typically what one has in mind when thinking "tarantula". Nowadays, the spiders colloquially known as "tarantulas" are species in the family Theraphosidae, which is the most diverse (with over 1100 described species ) and the most famous family of the infra-order Mygalomorphae . The smallest Theraphosidae species are about 10 mm long, which is not small by spider standards, and most of them are large to very large. The largest representatives of this family, species in the genus Theraphosa , are the largest and heaviest spiders on Earth, which can reach up to 12 cm in body length and 170g in body mass. Besides their often impressive size, many Theraphosidae sport beautiful colours and patterns, and many New World taxa, such as species in the genera Tliltocatl , Brachypelma , Aphonopelma and Grammostola , are