We recently read about two inmates in Florida who beat up a third inmate after he accused one of them of stealing his pet spider.
Apparently, inmates capture spiders, raise them and have them fight other inmates’ spiders. And, experts that we are at missing the big picture, we had to ask, after reading this story: Is it really possible to get spiders to fight? Do they make good pets? We turned to Petra Sierwald, curator at the Field Museum, for answers.
“You don’t have to teach spiders to fight,” she said. “All spiders are predators and will try to get any other spider they can get. If you put two spiders together, they will simply exhibit prey/captor behavior.”
Sierwald acknowledged that spiders aren’t the typical, cuddly pet but said she’d “fully support” inmates keeping spiders–but suggested they observe the creatures, not send them out to fight.
“There are so few people observing spiders and gathering data, and what they observe could be new to science.”
She suggested that inmates read Herbert Levi’s book “Spiders and Their Kin” and check out the American Arachnological Society Web site, www.americanarachnology.org.
