10 Epic Tarantula Facts that will Amaze Your Friends

A few years ago, my friend Margie moved from the cool, snowy north to hot and dry Arizona.

She was so excited to see tarantulas in person and take cool photos of them! Margie loves tarantulas so much that she just can’t help sharing cool tarantula facts with all her friends.

Today, I’m passing on the 10 most interesting facts about tarantulas Margie has shared with me over the years. Get ready for your mind to be blown!

10 Tarantula Facts to Amaze Your Friends

1. Female tarantulas live about 3x longer than males. Males only live for 7 to 8 years, while female tarantulas can live as long as 25 years!
2. Tarantulas can jump 6 feet high. The exact height a tarantula can achieve will vary per species, but many tarantulas can jump 5, 6, or even 7 feet in the air!
3. Tarantulas can see in all directions. Like all spiders, tarantulas have eight eyes. Because of the placement of their eyes in 2 rows of 4, tarantulas can keep a sharp lookout in all directions for both predators and prey. Good luck sneaking up on one!
4. The goliath birdeater tarantula is the biggest spider in the world. Its bite is strong enough to break the bones of small animals like mice. But don’t worry, it’s harmless to people. In fact, tarantula bites are no worse than bee stings!
5. Tarantulas are nocturnal. While tarantulas are most active at night, they can occasionally be seen during the day. They are also pretty active at dawn and dusk.
6. Tarantulas can lay thousands of eggs at once. Depending on the specific species, tarantulas may lay as little as 2 or as many as 3,000 eggs at one time. Most tarantulas lay between 100 and 300 eggs.
7. Tarantulas can live for months without food. If a tarantula has access to water, it can live for months and in some cases a year or even longer with no food. This is because they can store food in their bodies for later. Kind of like camels! (Note: I wanted to include this in my list of tarantula facts, but tarantulas need to eat much more than once a year to be healthy! You can read all about how to feed your pet tarantula in our recent blog post.)
8. Tarantulas can be almost any color. Most spiders are brown or black, but not all tarantulas! They come in a rainbow of colors, from blue and green to purple, red, and even bright pink! Scientists still don’t know why tarantulas can be so many colors, but they think it might have something to do with mating signals. The most common of the colored tarantulas are blue and green.
9. Tarantulas migrate every year. Most of the time, tarantulas don’t travel far from their burrows. But each fall, thousands of male tarantulas migrate as far as 50 miles to mate with females. Who knows, maybe tarantulas were the inspiration for the song “I’m Gonna Be” by The Proclaimers!
10. Tarantulas live all over the world. While they mostly live in warm places, tarantulas can be found on every continent except antarctica. Wild tarantulas in the US tend to live in desert states like Arizona and California, but most tarantulas across the globe actually prefer more wet climates.

Want More Cool Tarantula Facts?

There are so many more cool tarantula facts that I couldn’t possibly share them all here. But if you’d like to learn some practical facts and tips about keeping tarantulas, read our blog post about tarantula eating habits and what you should feed a pet tarantula. It won’t disappoint!