10 Cool Facts about Camel Spiders | Pet Tarantulas

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I've been a reptile and amphibian enthusiast all my life, since I was a young child and got into invertebrates later on in life, tarantulas, scorpions certainly being the available animals in the pet world. And then when the Iraq conflict started, a new type of arachnid was introduced to me and the United States. And that is the solafugid. That is its real name. It has a million little nicknames, the most common ones are camel spiders and/or wind scorpions, sometimes sun spiders. A lot of legends about these animals were perpetuated by the internet when a couple of our guys in uniform were stationed in Iraq and came across these in the desert.

That's where that particular species came from. Then unfortunately, the urban legends started. It started with one G.I. holding three of them clustered together on the barrel of a gun, and the perspective of the camera shot made it look like they were three feet long. And they're not. They don't get more than four or five, maybe six inches for a large one. And since I've studied them I've found there's over 1,000 species of these throughout the world. They're centered certainly Middle East and those types of areas, but we even have them here in the United States. Arizona and New Mexico we have solafugids running around. They're also confusing because their two pedipalps here on the top look like legs. These two long, elongated pieces in the front are not two extra legs. Tarantulas have them, too. They're shorter. But it looks like he has ten legs. He doesn't. He has eight legs. He's an arachnid species. The scary part about the animal, though, is its jaws. He has an incredible pair of pinchers here on both sides.

And I'm going to take a little care here and pick this guy up for you. Easy does it, fellow. They actually reciprocate back and forth almost like a saw. So when he grabs onto his prey, which is predominately insects but he'll also eat a small mouse or anything he can get his mouth on, he saws back and forth, and pulls pieces of it out. He takes all the blood out of it. He sucks it into this body. And it just almost disappears as he's eating it. It takes a long time for him to do it, but it's a very violent-looking act. All these crazy nicknames that the solafugid gets derive from its other characteristics. Camel spiders. Oh, easy. Camel spider they call it because it's often found adhered to a camel's skin because of the furriness of the camel. It can grab on, and it will act almost in a tick-like manner and will bite the underside of the camel. Legends are it can jump six feet high and grab onto the camel. We don't really know that it can do that. But it does find its way underneath the camel's belly. G.I.'s laying in a sleeping bag in the middle of a desert, he certainly has invited himself in, and many a person in the armed forces has a solafugid bite. It's also called the wind scorpion or the sun spider. It's not a spider. It's not a scorpion.

But these names get confused. And why does it do that? Well, I was told by people right here in my store that this scorpion was chasing me through the desert. What it is is it wants to be out of the sun, so it's staying in the person's shadow. And as they walk away, it moves pretty quickly. It moves along in the shadow and gives the illusion that it's chasing you across the desert. So a lot of myths about these animals, not many of them true. Do your homework. For a captive animal, pretty fairly straightforward to keep. Desert environment. All animals need moisture, so it needs a spot where he can get some moisture. It doesn't eat a lot, but you got to feed him once a week or so. But unfortunately, a very short-lived animal. Three to five years would be about a life span for these.

And once you get one that this big, he's already of an undetermined amount of age. None of them come from captive collections currently. They're all wild-caught animals. So therefore, you're getting one that's already old, so you're not going to have the pet for very, very long. Definitely a specialty animal. For anybody who's interested in something extremely bizarre, the camel spider or wind scorpion or solafugid would be a great candidate. For those who are squeamish, I'd stick to frogs.

[jc_malone]

In AZ, these things came into my house.  They are very quick.  I saw one eating an insect and I could actually hear the crunch.

[gsimon]

I actually caught one of these in New Mexico and kept it for a few weeks. It literally started trying to saw its way out of the cage and didn't want to eat stuff for the last week I had it. So I decided to return him to the wild. He was by far the coolest invertebrate I ever had and only kept him for a short time. They also have AWESOME burrowing behavior where they shovel dirt with those jaws and then sort of nestle themselves into little holes they make for themself haha! He was INSANELY fast but smaller than this one.

Fed him a moth as his first meal and it disappeared in a puff of moth dust haha! When I first spotted him he was flying across the desert! I had to actual keep a quick walking pace to stay with him. I thought he was a scorpion but when I got closer and he quit running all over the place he started throwing his pedipalps up like "whats up???" I was like o_0 What the HELL is this thing??? For the record I researched him and found out what he was PRE-Iraq war so I knew it was BS as soon as the legends started popping up.  Good old Rocky... craziest chainsaw killer of the bug world I ever knew!

[farbott]

STOP POKING ME WITH THOSE METAL STICK THINGS!

[fakemadereal]

Here in Washington State, we Refer to them as "Nightmare Fuel".

[jennjeffs]

we get these from time to time In our house, they are QUICK moving but harmless... i usually just grab it and take it outside

[NoName-rjqe]

My favorite myth about these guys was that they could run 20 MPH and produce an audible scream while doing so. I also heard that they were part of the "alt right".

[hiding_from_fizzy]

Honestly, I like this video. He gave a lot of correct information about these lil guys. Now, his information on tarantulas...thats a whole different story.

[EdwardTyndall]

i caught one of these in sanderson tx and showed my dad and he screamed like a sissy girl that made my life worth liveing lmfao  

[Radazure]

What a gladiator. It looks like it'd never back down against any foe!

[puffthemagicdaddy]

Not even gonna lie but they're kinda cute.

[Groovyman-jeyb]

I see them all the time during the Summer in the PHX area. Always a relief to know it's not a real scorpion. They are really fast!

[mystraven]

You find these a lot in the Northern-Cape South Africa. We call them Haarskeerders due to the way they bite.

[jsigmo]

We have them here in central Wyoming. I see them out mostly at night, trotting around, presumably on the prowl for something to eat. They readily eat moths when you offer them. We often see them near buildings with outdoor lights. My guess is that they are attracted to the other bugs that are attracted by the lights, but perhaps they're attracted directly by the lights themselves.

They seem more plentiful when you get into less developed areas.

They're quite fast, and their jaws are powerful, but they are not venomous. Often, when you feed one a moth, the first thing it does is to use its two pairs of jaws to grasp the moth at the neck, and simply tear its head off. Then it will eat the entire thing, and as mentioned below, you can hear the crunching as they chow down.

I've gotten a lot of photos, and some videos of them. If you give them a moth, they'll stop running around while they eat it, and don't seem to even notice that a camera is only inches away from them.

Gravid females (females with eggs) will burrow furiously to create a place to have the babies. They're amazingly fast at excavating a decent-sized hole in the ground. You can see the eggs inside of the abdomen of the gravid females. They show through the surface.

I had a place in the outer area of my office, right near the doorway that always had a black widow spider web. She didn't cause any trouble, so we never bothered her. One night a solfugid ran into her web. She quickly came out, but when she got close to the struggling solfugid, she retreated back into her nest. The solfugid took only 30 seconds or so to cut his way out of her web and then go on his merry way again. I suspect that had the black widow challenged the solfugid, the solfugid may well have killed and perhaps eaten the black widow, so she made the right choice in retreating. It may well be that the black widows can tell if something trapped in their web is small or weak enough to be good prey, but leave anything that shakes the web too vigorously alone since it might be dangerous to the spider.

Although the solfugids seem to be quite common around here, most people have never seen one and are often surprised that we have them in this area. I usually see them only at night, so I suspect people just aren't in the right places at night. And, they do blend in with the usual dirt background, so unless you're looking for them you may not see them.

[darkranger]

See, now this is how you do a "# of facts about something" video.
No labored changes in between facts, no over dramatic, long winded pompous circumstance.
Just a person talking about a topic they enjoy.

[lawhammergaming]

Here in Colorado I just caught mine last night under my window waving hi at me, he's in an enclosure now but I like him, he loves the grass hoppers here.

[euugh]

Legends say its very dangerous. When he got picked up he was like "nya, let me go hooman >.<"

[Kopa_Malphas]

Theyre also called "Nope spiders" :)

[AAhmou]

The third cutest tarentula I've seen. I want to keep a baby one in a glass cage. :3

[grantcleveland]

This is the most straight forward facts ive gotten about this animal

[herculesatan]

“You can’t expect a demigod to beat a decapod.”
“Nah mate, those aren’t legs.”
“Really? Damn.”