Tarantulas in Colorado Travel on a Deadly Quest for Love; Local Festival Celebrates the Arachnid’s Mating Season

Tarantulas are moving in the plains of southeastern Colorado in search of a mating partner.

In Search for Love

Fall is tarantula mating season in the plains of southeastern Colorado. Each September and October, male Oklahoma brown tarantulas (Aphonopelma hentzi) begin their search for love when the nights turn chilly. They can travel from 20 to 100 meters each evening looking for a partner.

During this season, dozens of male spiders can be seen wandering along the sides of the road. Once they find a potential partner, they perform a strange courtship ritual where they use their legs to tap out a rhythm to get the female's attention and encourage it to get out of her burrow.

If the male tarantula is quick enough, it can get away and run to try and find another potential mate. They need to skedaddle because the female might want to eat them instead. It is one of the threats the roaming spiders face in addition to their natural predators.

Technically, this event is not considered migration since there is no persistent movement or a significant relocation to a new habitat. Instead, experts call this a "mategration." Generally, male tarantulas take between 7 and 10 years and females 10 to 12 years before reaching reproductive maturity. By then, they have grown to roughly 5 inches in diameter, with males growing pedipalps or a pair of appendages attached to their heads.

A Season to Celebrate

In the municipality of La Junta, residents celebrate the spiders' mating season with an annual tarantula festival. Hundreds of people from all over Colorado and nearby states gather at La Junta for the second annual tarantula celebration.

Visitors also head to the spider's neck of the grassland to watch its journey in search of a mating partner. The males can be seen roaming across the Comanche National Grassland, which measures more than 443,000 acres.

In this festival, tourists can also witness homemade tarantula parade floats and costumes while children get their faces and arms painted with colored spiders and bugs. There are also booths where they can pick up some spidery swag and those that sell artificial tarantula souvenirs. The event also features games such as a human hairy legs contest, an eight-legged race, and other fun-filled and educational activities.

There are numerous species of tarantulas, but the Oklahoma Brown Tarantula is the most abundant in the U.S., ranging from New Mexico to Louisiana. La Junta also aims to get the title "Tarantula Capital of the World," and the annual festival serves as a way to promote local tourism and awareness about tarantulas.

Tarantula fans believe that spiders do not deserve the reputation they get from horror movies. Despite their fierce looks, tarantulas are mostly docile. Their bites are painful, but the venom is usually harmless to humans.

According to tarantula researcher Dallas Haselhuhn from Eastern Michigan University's Shillington Laboratory, spiders are still poorly studied. Until more research, scientists will not know how the spiders might be affected by climate change or land development.