I have a captive-bred Hogna Carolinensis who’s about 5 months old. I’ve had her since August and haven’t had problems with until now. I give her a cricket every 2-3 days and she usually eats it no problem. She’s also pretty active normally. Starting about 2 weeks ago, though, she stopped eating and for the past several days I haven’t seen her come out of her burrow. I was able to see inside with a flashlight and I’m pretty sure she’s still alive, but I’m getting worried. At one point I even herded a cricket into her burrow with tweezers and she wasn’t interested.
She moved burrows shortly before this started, from one she’d dug herself to a carboard roll I’d included when I first built her enclosure. The tank otherwise hasn’t been altered or moved. I’d recently switched from small crickets to large crickets for 2-3 feedings before she stopped eating; I’ve switched back to small crickets just in case, but she hasn’t touched those either. I’ve tried mealworms before this started but as far as I’m aware she wasn’t interested (though she hides all the cricket carcasses in her burrow so maybe she has and I just didn’t see it?). The only thing other than crickets she’s eaten was a wild grasshopper maybe 2 weeks before all this started.
Just before this started she was really antsy for about a week, constantly pacing along the edge of her enclosure and trying to climb out. She’s normally fairly active and isn’t shy about exploring while I’m watching, but doesn’t normally try to escape.
I’ve never seen her molt (I assume she also keeps those in her burrow), so I’m not sure how close to molting time she is. Would molting stop her from eating for this long?
Update: Tore down part of the front of her burrow to get a better look at her. She wasn’t upside-down yesterday… I’m hoping this means shes molting but worried she’s dying. I wont be home from work until about midnight; I’ll check on her again then.
Thanks for the tag! Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of answers. I’ve kept a wolf spider, but it was a wild-caught adult who never molted in my care. So I don’t really know what their premolt behaviour looks like. My tarantulas will hide themselves away and refuse food when in premolt, sometimes for weeks at a time, though true spiders tend to do everything on a faster timetable, so I wouldn’t expect a wolf spider’s premolt to last more than a few days? But I don’t really know.
I will say that when my wolf spider was dying, she didn’t really hide herself away. She just kind of sat out in the open and slowly wasted away. But she was from a different genus and native to a different area, so I don’t know if her behaviour is relevant to a Hogna species.
All this is just a lot of words to say…I don’t know. But hopefully she’s just taking her sweet time with molting and she’ll emerge and start eating again soon.
EDIT: do you know for sure this spider is female? If it is indeed female, then 5 months would be a rather short lifespan, but if it’s male, it’s much more likely it’s coming to the natural end of its lifespan.
I’m pretty sure she’s female based on her smaller pedipalps and lack of orange stripes, but she’s my first and like 90% of my spider sexing knowledge comes from Wikipedia, so I may be wrong.
Got home tonight, and she’s back right-side-up and tore down most of the rest of the wall in front of her burrow herself. She’s still not quite willing to go for crickets or come out of her burrow, but I’m feeling a lot more optimistic.
Hold off on feeding for a few days just in case she did molt. They are very fragile right after molting until the exoskeleton hardens up. Crickets and such could do some damage.
Yay! Sounds like she was indeed molting, so you’ll want to hold off on feeding for a few days to a week. Her new exoskeleton will need time to harden, and that includes her fangs. Her fangs will literally be soft until everything has solidified, which is why she won’t be able to eat for a little while.
I am hoping Jennifer will pop in to advise……
