American Museum of Natural History Tarantula training for new spider exhibit; where are the great zoo spider exhibits?

DavidBrown

DavidBrown

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
The American Museum of Natural History in New York City is putting on a new exhibit of live spiders, and is training tarantulas to meet the public:
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/15/a...tural-history-museum.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

The article has some interesting information on how a live spider exhibit is developed.

Does anybody have a favorite zoo or natural history museum spider exhibit that you have seen?

The LA Zoo had a great spider exhibit called "Spider City" in 2007 in the old nocturnal house, but alas it was temporary.

The Santa Barbara Zoo has a few spider species in its "EWWWWW" exhibit. My wife's favorite species is the pink-toed tarantula which looks like it is wearing pink ballet slippers.
 
When I visited the National Zoo (Washington DC) in 2005 for the AZAD conference, they had orb spiders in an open (no glass) enclosure and a docent would put a dead cricket on the web and the large spider would immediately to it. The docent explained the process from injection of venom to eating while it was actually happening. One of the most fascinating zoo demonstrations I have seen.
 
Arizona Docent said:
When I visited the National Zoo (Washington DC) in 2005 for the AZAD conference, they had orb spiders in an open (no glass) enclosure and a docent would put a dead cricket on the web and the large spider would immediately to it. The docent explained the process from injection of venom to eating while it was actually happening. One of the most fascinating zoo demonstrations I have seen.
Click to expand...

That does sound like a very cool demonstration. I remember seeing the orb spider and web in the open enclosure when I visited the National Zoo invertebrate house last summer, but they weren't having a feeding demonstation. The National Zoo has some really great demonstrations from what I did experience (docents narrating orangs crossing the O-line, small mammal house talk) and have seen on ZooChat ("meet a kiwi").
 
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