The closer you get to a spider, the more fascinating it appears. From afar, it’s easy to find them terrifying. But as you go up close, near enough to peek into their compound eyes, they’re just multi-legged creatures – understudied, unappreciated and a potpourri of scientific findings.
The Metallic Tarantula (Poecilotheria Metallica) is so rare, its locality is listed only as the Nandyal-Giddalur road in Andhra Pradesh. It was discovered in 1899, inside a timber pile in Gooty – from where it also got the name ‘Gooty tarantula’. It would be more than a century before it was discovered again in the wild, in the Seshachalam hill ranges within Andhra Pradesh’s Chittoor and Kadappa districts. Its initial discovery in Gooty was likely an outcome of the timber trade – which continues to degrade its foresty home.
Finding it again took dedication and a lot of climbing trees and peeking into webs. But the effort paid off. By identifying its new limited range, researchers were able to get the spider classified as a Critically Endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). With less than 100 square kilometres of habitat today, it’s one of the rarest spiders on earth.
The moment the world caught sight of the Gooty tarantula’s incredible blue, demand grew for the spider as a pet. It’s now one of the most expensive arthropods in the international pet trade, going for between $150-400 depending on whether its a male or a female. They start out looking like plain brown spiders, but after a year of molting, develop the radiant blue tinge that makes them so striking. Pet keepers take care not to be bitten – as the venom, though not fatal, can leave symptoms of pain and headache for up to a week.
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