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 often fairly calm and placid. In addition to that, their husbandry is quite straightforward, so they make great, low-maintenance pets, which is why they have been a staple in the trade for a long time.

In addition to their often impressive size, many Theraphosidae species are colourful and beautifully patterned

 

Of all spiders, Theraphosidae are also the most commonly featured in movies. Almost always portrayed in a scary and negative way by the media and popular culture, spiders have long been an easy way of scaring, or at least creeping out, the spectators. Because of that, they have appeared in countless films, mainly in the horror genre; their movie star career began almost as early as the very invention of cinema itself. While they have been featured as the main threat in some old and less old monster movies, spiders are more often cast as secondary antagonists, or just as explicitly creepy or symbolic props.

Jack Arnold's Tarantula (1955) used an actual tarantula and advanced (for the time) but painstaking special effects to make it look titanic

Lately, the use of actual animals has often been supplemented or replaced with cheaper and more versatile CGI, but pre-CGI films that included spiders generally featured various New World tarantulas (more often than not, Brachypelma species). Not only do they look impressive to the viewer, but their large size, relatively slow movements, calm and predictable demeanour, and non-dangerous bite (which is always a plus in case things go unexpectedly wrong) make them ideal to work with on a film set.

Poster for Sam Firstenberg's Spiders 2 (2001), featuring a Grammostola sp., even though the (cheesy and over-the-top) film itself mainly uses CGI and props

This Hollywood fame has turned Theraphosidae into true icons of the spider world, so notorious that even someone who knows next to nothing and doesn't care much about spiders still knows what a tarantula is. Their immense notoriety has largely obscured the origin of the name, and the fact that Theraphosidae actually "stole" it, quite recently, from a completely different and unrelated spider. 

Originally, the word "tarantula" doesn't come from the English language, but from Italy; the city still known today as Taranto, in Apulia (the "heel" of the "boot", at the very south of Italy) alludes to its place of origin.
Based on the modern definition of the word, the link between Taranto and tarantulas is not obvious at all. No species of Theraphosidae occurs in Puglia; geographically, the closest is the small Ischnocolus valentinus, found in Sicily and Spain.
There is, nonetheless, a real connection between Taranto and a large spider known as a "tarantula", reportedly very abundant in the region and widely feared, but this spider is no Theraphosidae at all; not even a Mygalomorph. It was a "true spider", a large species of wolf spider (family Lycosidae) known to scientists as Lycosa tarantula.

Lycosa tarantula is a large, spectacular wolf spider found in France, Italy and probably the Balkans. Many other similar Lycosa species are found all around the Mediterranean, and many of these species have been, or are still, wrongly lumped with L.tarantula

With a body length (legs excluded) reaching up to 30 mm in adult females, Lycosa tarantula is not, by any means, a small spider. While it doesn't even remotely compete in size with large Theraphosidae, it is one of the largest and most impressive spiders in Europe, comparable in size to many "small" Theraphosids.

Reaching up to 30 mm in body length (this 23 mm long female is average-sized, not even close to the maximum), Lycosa tarantula is one of the largest spiders in Europe

 

Lycosa tarantula's lifestyle is, in many ways, quite similar to most Theraphosidae: females and immature males live in deep burrows, while adult males, more slender and longer-legged, wander around in search of the females' burrows. 

Female and immature male Lycosa tarantula live in deep burrows, in dry and open environments

This species inhabits dry, open environments, such as steppe, shrubland and sparse woodland. It can live in agricultural and grazed land (in many areas of its range, it is even particularly common in pastures grazed by sheep or goats, as grazing keeps the habitat open and suitable for the spiders) as long as the soil isn't disturbed too deeply and too often.

Adult males are more slender and longer-legged than females, and often very pale, almost white, in colour

For the rural communities in the South of Italy, it was, thus, a common encounter, particularly in the old times when people worked the fields with manual tools. Not only would they see the males running around, but agricultural work would also dig up the females. Disturbed in its burrow, Lycosa tarantula often puts up an impressive defensive display: the wide open chelicerae flash an orange colouration, also found on the face and pedipalps, and the raised front legs show contrasting black and white bands. It makes the spider look conspicuous, threatening, and completely different from what it looks like most of the time.

When disturbed in its burrow, Lycosa tarantula puts up an impressive defensive display, showing its colourful chelicerae, and the bands under its front legs

It is all a bluff, though: out of its burrow, it is actually a very calm and passive animal, which is extremely unlikely to bite if touched. In addition to that, its bite, although reportedly quite painful, is not medically significant. 

However, its large size, impressive appearance, and possibly its intimidating threat display, were enough to prompt a fascinatingly strange belief in Apulia. A mass psychosis which, far-fetched as it was, persisted for centuries (from the 13th, possibly even the 11th, to the 19th century) and, at its peak, became so famous that it made the name "tarantula" notorious in all western European languages.

Historical accounts from the time, such as Baglivi's (1696) explicitly mention that the tarantula was considered harmless throughout most of its range, except in Apulia where it was regarded as very dangerous, and an object of superstitious fear.
Its bite was believed by Apulians to cause a potentially life-threatening syndrome called tarantism. However, even there, the bite of the tarantula was reportedly not always dangerous, but only at some times of the year (mainly the hottest days of summer) and only to some patients; those with pre-existing psychological conditions such as a melancholic or "excitable" temperament were said to be most at risk.

The range of alleged symptoms resulting from the bite of the tarantula was huge, and variable.
The spider was said to most often bite people in their sleep, but those bitten while awake would notice a mild but sharp pain, comparable to a bee or ant sting. The ensuing syndrome would sometimes include cutaneous (such as yellow or black discolouration at the bite site) and systemic symptoms (pain, numbness, laboured breathing, profuse sweating).
However, the main, most serious and most intriguing symptoms of tarantism would be of psychological nature. People afflicted with tarantism would enter a deeply apathetic and melancholic state, developing "a prodigious sadness", sometimes so deep that they would almost appear already dead.
On the contrary, other subjects would become manic, delirious and restless, or alternate frantic and melancholic episodes. Varied as its manifestations were, the disease showed some consistent traits, such as an extreme sensitivity, either an aversion or attraction, to some colours (red, green and blue were said to be the most pleasing to most patients, while black was the most frequently seen as abhorrent) and, most importantly, to music. 

Severe tarantism was said to be deadly, sometimes in as little as an hour. According to the Apulian beliefs, the only way to revive and save the tarantolati (the people afflicted with tarantism) was with a particular type of music, the curative tarantella: a lively, rhythmic music, based on a simple melody, which progressively gets faster and more intense as it goes.

Piece of therapeutic tarantella and illustration of a tarantula, by Athanasius Kircher (1643). While the rendition of the spider's morphology isn't very accurate, its patterns are quite true-to-life

Hearing the right tarantella would trigger an immediate improvement of the patient's condition; they would slowly emerge from their comatose state to eventually respond to the music with a convulsive, visceral and hectic dance, and would keep dancing in a trance-like state until they collapsed from exhaustion. This would supposedly make the patient sweat the venom out and "clean the blood".
Just like with colours, different patients would react to different melodies and instruments, so the musicians would have to find the right one.
Even the music, though, would only bring temporary relief to the victim; the tarantella was a treatment, not a cure. Tarantism was reputedly incurable, so the tarantolati would experience seasonal relapses, and they would need to join the musicians and dance the tarantella every summer. At its paroxysm, in the 17th and 18th centuries, the phenomenon had turned into full-blown festivals: large groups of tarantolati would be seen dancing in the streets, and musicians would come to the south of Italy from all over Europe in summer to play the tarantella, which would earn them substantial fees.

The real causes of tarantism have been an object of much speculation and debate in the modern era. Nowadays, it is largely seen as a mass hysteria phenomenon, mainly, if not entirely, induced by psychological factors.
Numerous hypotheses have been proposed to explain it, and the reality was probably a combination of several; the enormous range of reported symptoms of tarantism leaves room for many.
The most obvious one would be that tarantism may have been used as a convenient explanation for psychiatric disorders such as forms of depression, borderline, or bipolar disorders, which would have been, at the time, impossible to understand and treat.
Another alternative explanation, not necessarily incompatible with this one, is that tarantism could have been (at least in part) an excuse for observing ancient Pagan rites inherited from the Greek and Roman times, in a way that circumvented their prohibition by the Church; some parts of Baglivi's account allude to this possibility, like the fact that tarantolati would sometimes get bitten on purpose to partake in the festivities.
Finally, like some other episodes of dancing manias in medieval Europe, it has been proposed that tarantism may have been an array of neurological diseases resulting from poisoning or infection, such as ergotism or Sydenham's chorea. However, this explanation is not entirely satisfactory (at least, not as the only explanation), as tarantism was a recurring phenomenon, reappearing every summer, not showing up in intermittent outbreaks like these diseases.

A frequently proposed hypothesis is that the envenomations blamed on the tarantula were actually caused by the medically significant Mediterranean black widow, Latrodectus tredecimguttatus, which would explain the connection between tarantism and spiders.
Some elements do indeed point in that direction: Baglivi mentions a type of "blackish tarantula" whose particularly dangerous bite reportedly caused "grievous pain in the part that is "stung", cramps, chillness and a cold sweat all over the body, an inclination to vomit [...] and swelling of the belly", symptoms very similar to those of latrodectism (envenomation by a widow spider). Elsewhere in the Mediterranean region, for instance in Corsica, traditional remedies against the black widow's bite were based, like the tarantella, on the idea that the victim would need to "sweat the venom out" to be cured.

The Mediterranean black widow, Latrodectus tredecimguttatus, is often pointed as the actual culprit behind tarantism cases, but this explanation isn't entirely convincing

There are, nonetheless, at least as many elements in the accounts about tarantism contradicting this hypothesis than supporting it. Latrodectism has fairly recognisable symptoms and, while some resemble those of tarantism, some of the latter differ radically. The psychological manifestations of tarantism (which are said to be the main consequence of the "blackish" tarantula's bite), in particular, are not consistent at all with latrodectism.
In addition to that, illustrations showing the tarantula in accounts about tarantism, such as Baglivi's and Kircher's, are quite unambiguous, and clearly represent Lycosa tarantula, not Latrodectus tredecimguttatus.

Lycosa tarantula is relatively variable in colours and patterns, so it is entirely possible that the "blackish" tarantula may simply have been a darker colour variant or simply old, worn-out females like this one, and not a different species

 

Furthermore, the black widow, locally known as malmignatta, was well-known and feared by rural populations around the Mediterranean at the time, and looks nothing like the tarantula. It is, thus, more than likely than the Apulian peasants, who encountered both of these spiders on a regular basis, were more than capable of telling them apart.
While it is almost certain that some cases of latrodectism have been falsely blamed on the tarantula, the idea that most, if not all of the cases of tarantism may actually have been black widow bites does not hold up to scrutiny.

Actually, most cases of tarantism wouldn't have had to involve a spider at all. Baglivi reported that most victims were supposedly bitten in their sleep, which means the spider was simply assumed to be the cause (very much like in the modern psychosis about necrotic arachnidism, where lesions are often abusively blamed on spiders without any direct proof).

Whatever the actual cause of tarantism was, it wasn't the tarantula's fault

We know one thing for certain, though: the bite of the poor, misunderstood tarantula didn't directly cause these symptoms. Contrary to the assumption reported and believed by Baglivi, according to whom the Apulian tarantula was of a different, more dangerous species than the harmless one encountered in the rest of Italy and southern Europe, the Apulian population is not genetically distinct from the other Lycosa tarantula populations in Italy and southeastern France.
Interestingly, Baglivi noted that one of his colleagues from Naples, eager to investigate the puzzling disease, intentionally got himself bitten by a tarantula which was sent to him from Apulia, and did not develop the telltale symptoms of tarantism.
While, from today's perspective, this experiment would be interpreted as proof that the tarantula's bite is not dangerous and doesn't actually cause tarantism, Baglivi instead deduced that the tarantula's venom needed to be "exalted" by the hot Apulian climate to show the full extent of its effects, and wasn't as active in the cooler Neapolitan climate.

Another important, and often overlooked, fact about tarantism is that the tarantula was not the only alleged causative agent: scorpions were also said to cause the same disease, as reported by Baglivi, who describes three cases where these arachnids were the culprits.
The thing is, unlike France and Spain where fairly dangerous Buthus species occur, Italy does not have any medically significant scorpions. The only species occurring in Apulia belong to the genus Euscorpius, the small European black scorpions, whose sting only causes fairly intense, but short-lived, local pain in humans; the fact that Baglivi describes, in one of the cases, the culprit as "a black scorpion" further confirms the identification (European Buthus are yellow in colour, not black).

Tarantism was not only blamed on the tarantula, but also on small scorpions in the genus Euscorpius, whose sting is painful but not dangerous

Puzzlingly, in at least two cases described by Baglivi, the scorpions were felt stinging and recovered immediately, not just suspected. This further demonstrates that tarantism can't be simply explained by mistaken identification of bites from more dangerous species such as black widows. People did, at least sometimes, experience tarantism after sting and bites from harmless arachnids. 

Thats makes the disease all the more difficult to explain in any other way than a collective psychosis, probably enhanced by the nocebo effect (which is kind of a "reverse placebo effect", where the subject experiences harmful symptoms from a situation that doesn't cause them, because they expect these effects to occur). 

This interpretation is further solidified by the fact that the phenomenon slowly died out as it progressively stopped being regarded it as a real disease. While its reality was still largely accepted by scholars and physicians in the 18th century (although some remained sceptical, even at the peak of its fame), both the medical interest in tarantism and its prevalence started waning in the 19th.
As a more rational and scientific approach to the study of venoms, envenomations and medicine, but also of psychology, developed and became the norm in the 19th and 20th centuries, tarantism was seen less as an actual medical condition, and more as a bizarre case of mass psychosis, caused by the effects of folklore and tradition on excitable and superstitious folk.
With fewer and fewer believers, the disease became less and less common, even though anecdotal outbreaks and isolated cases were recorded in Apulia until as late as the 1960s.

Nowadays, cases of tarantism, as well as the belief in its biological reality, are virtually unheard of. On the other hand, tarantella, as a dance and music genre, survived, and thrives.
Pizzica and tarantella have become a central element of Apulian, and even Italian, cultural identities, and a huge music festival dedicated to it takes place every summer in Salento.
Deeply evocative of Italian culture and traditions, tarantellas have featured in countless Italian and American films, so much that some now almost sound like a cliché.
Even though it is not claimed to treat the bite of the tarantula anymore, it is still recommended as a sovereign cure for sadness, melancholy and ailments of the soul.

Tarantella dancers (1843). Rather than the visceral, spasmodic curative tarantella, typically danced alone or in large groups, this image shows the couple's tarantella, a much more codified and festive form, practiced as a courtship dance, not in a therapeutic purpose (source: New York Public Library, author unknown)

 
Another, less direct, legacy from the tarantism craze, is the presence of the name "tarantula" in most Western European languages ("tarantula" in English and Spanish, "tarentule" in French, "Tarantel" in German...).
"Tarantula" is not a recent addition to these languages (as evidenced by the French spelling of the word, which is written with "en" as it does not derive from the modern Italian language, but from the old, medieval Latin name of Taranto, which was Tarentum). In all of them, it used to designate Lycosa tarantula and other large wolf spiders before it became a common name for Theraphosidae (in German, where Theraphosidae are most commonly called "Vogelspinnen", "Tarantel" still mostly applies to large wolf spiders). 

As dusty and forgotten as it may sound nowadays, tarantism was actually a very infamous phenomenon throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, not just in Apulia but everywhere in southwestern Europe. Not only was the syndrome an object of interest for many notorious physicians of the time, but travelling musicians from the entire continent used to be drawn to southern Italy in summer to play tarantellas.
It's probably through the latter, rather than from the scholars, that the strange tales from Apulia about the tarantula became known among the common folk.
Soon enough, the belief in the disease spread like wildfire, and in the second half of the 18th century, outbreaks of tarantism started appearing not just in Italy, but wherever the tarantula and/or other large Lycosa and Hogna species occurred, particularly in Spain.
Thus, to the Spaniards who went to settle to the Americas at the time, tarantism was not a curious piece of obscure folklore. It was current events, possibly a cause for concern to some, and maybe even something affecting members of their families. The tarantula was a celebrity.

* No wonder, then, that they gave the name of the largest, scariest spider they knew, to the largest, most impressive Arachnids they met on the New Continent.
Initially, the name "tarantula" was not specifically given to Theraphosidae only, but to any huge, freaky-looking, spider-like arachnid. Evidence of this can be found in the (now invalid and in synonymy with Phrynus) name Tarantula, which was given to a genus of Amblypygids ("tailless whip-scorpions") in 1793.

The huge Amblypygid Phrynus longipes, from the Caribbean, was initially named Tarantula longipes

Interestingly, in American English, the name "tarantula" did not seem to immediately apply to Theraphosidae either. It seems that in the late 19th century, the name still applied to large burrowing wolf spiders (genera Tigrosa, Rabidosa and Hogna, mainly), of which the eastern half of the USA has no shortage.

It seems that it is only after the Westwards expansion, somewhere between the late 19th and early 20th century, that English-speaking Americans started using the name "tarantulas" to exclusively designate the large Theraphosidae they encountered in what had recently become the southwestern USA *. 

Thus, it is relatively recently, somewhere in the last century of its 800+ year-long existence, that the word "tarantula" switched from designating a large European wolf spider to unrelated, mainly tropical Theraphosidae, in the English language.
No doubt that cinema, and also American-made wildlife books and documentaries, have widely contributed in solidifying this new definition worldwide. 

Before that, Theraphosidae were known in English by a myriad of other local common names, many of which now designate particular subfamilies or informal subgroups of the family, for instance "bird-eating spiders", "baboon spiders" in Southern Africa (a name that is mainly used for the African species in the subfamilies Harpactirinae, Eumenophorinae, and Stromatopelminae), or "earth tigers" for Ornithoctoninae in Southeast Asia.⏹

African tarantulas are often called "baboon spiders", because of the adhesive brushes (scopula) underneath the tips of their legs, which are somewhat reminiscent of baboon fingers

* Traces of the word "tarantula"'s early journey in the Americas is extremely scarce and fragmentary, so this part of the article unfortunately has to involve a lot of speculation.
The scenario proposed here is a hypothesis based on whatever evidence I was able to gather, and should not be taken as unequivocally proven historical fact.

References are integrated into the text of the article; the words in blue are clickable and will redirect you to the sources of the information, including videos of historical tarantellas. 

Except for the film posters and historical images, the photos illustrating this article are mine and are not free to use without permission