Boots (Avicularia metallica)...

This tiny spider is cute, but the colors aren't too exciting yet...

A picture of boots in her web taken on 11/14/1999. Notice how much darker she is all over compared to the first picture... She also hasn't eaten in a while. She's probably near a molt.

Again you can see the dark streaks on her legs. You also have a good look at her balding abdomen with it's zig-zag pattern. I'm no expert, but I think you can actually see the hairs growing under her skin. Also, you can see that some of her current hairs are two-tone; light at the tip, dark for the rest.

Only a few hours after the previous pictures were taken, she molted. I couldn't get a good shot of her until quite a bit later, and she had already gotten a bit of her color back by then.

You can see the colors nicely on her shrunken abdomen.

A really fantastic picture of a nickel with a couple shots of Boots's shed skin for scale.

She's nice and fat again, and you can see her neato abdominal pattern.

They say the camera adds 100 milligrams...

She's eating a cricket here. I didn't know how fat she'd gotten until she finally came out today. I think she'll have to lay off the pork rinds!

Big fat Boots posed on the side so we could see her belly. I'd have a hard time sexing her at this size.

You can see the big change of color that occured with just one molt.

Two molts later, she's lost her chevrons entirely, but gained some pretty serious iridescence.

Starting to get some size on her...

She's really gentle...

Climbing in her home.

Boots (Avicularia metallica) on 11/20/2000.

Boots (Avicularia metallica) on 11/20/2000.

Copyright ©1999-2008 Thomas Schumm