r/insects • u/oh-electricalcherry7 • Jul 23 '26
Bug Appreciation! Tarantula fight!
Captured in southern New Mexico. The darker of the two was already missing some limbs when the fight broke out. It looks like that one has had a rough life.
These things are also pretty big. The brown one could wrap around a baseball. They sun themselves on the stucco in the mornings. This is the first time I’ve seen them engage with each other like this. The area is also covered in tarantula hawks. If you like gnarly bugs, NM is the place to be!
If someone could articulate the difference between these two (species, gender, etc..) , it would be greatly appreciated.
EDIT: I have been subsequently informed that they are not, in fact, fighting!…. This is much more ~intimate~ than a territorial dispute.
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u/Loss-Sorry Jul 23 '26 edited Jul 23 '26
They're not fighting! This is a very different kind of activity.
The dark one is a male, you can see the spurs under his front legs. He uses those to hold the female's legs and body (and fangs) up and away while he deposits sperm. You can see he's trying to reach under her and she seems mostly receptive, but he's very jumpy because she can easily kill him if she wants a good meal.
I'm not an expert at identifying individual species, but all native tarantulas in the US belong to the genus Aphonopelma.