Brazilian Salmon Pink Birdeater (Lasiodora parahybana)

Physical description and identification

The salmon pink birdeater is built on a giant scale. The carapace is broad and dark, the abdomen is bulky, and the whole animal is covered in dense short black hairs through which longer salmon, rust or pink bristles project, especially on the legs and around the rear of the abdomen. Freshly molted spiders show the colour at its strongest; old individuals fade to a dusty charcoal.

Adults

• Size: the figure quoted everywhere — 8 to 10 inches — is the leg span, about 20–28 cm. The body itself is far shorter, roughly 8–10 cm (3–4 in), and a heavy female may weigh close to 100 g. That makes it one of the three largest tarantulas in the world by span, alongside the Goliath birdeater and Theraphosa apophysis.
• Colour: greyish-black to dark brown overall, with pinkish-red hair fringing the legs and abdomen. Mature males are brighter, with longer legs and a noticeably reddish abdomen.
• Fangs: large but not an inch long, as is often repeated. In a big female they reach roughly 1.5–2 cm and strike downward in parallel, the mygalomorph pattern.
• Sexing: females are heavier and bulkier; males are leggier and, once mature, carry swollen pedipalp bulbs and tibial hooks. Reliable identification before maturity means examining the shed skin for a spermatheca rather than judging by shape.

Eggs and egg sac

A mated female spins a thick silk sac inside her retreat and lays an exceptionally large clutch — commonly several hundred eggs, with the biggest sacs reported to hold well over a thousand. She guards the sac in the burrow for six to eight weeks, turning it to keep temperature and humidity even.

Spiderlings

Hatchlings stay clustered in and around the sac through their first molt, then disperse across the forest floor. They are dull brown and show no salmon colour for many months. Growth is genuinely fast for a tarantula: with steady food a spiderling reaches several centimetres of span in its first year and can approach adult size in two to three years, after which females molt only once a year or less. See our guide to spider molting for what that process involves.

The web and hunting

This species builds no capture web. Silk is used to line a burrow or a hollow under a log and to lay a carpet at the entrance, and that carpet works as a vibration sensor. The spider waits at the mouth of the retreat after dark, feels a cockroach or beetle cross the silk, and strikes — seizing the prey in its front legs and driving the fangs in. Descriptions of a small or inadequate web miss the point: there is no snare at all.

Where the salmon pink birdeater lives

Lasiodora parahybana is native to a restricted area of Atlantic Forest in north-eastern Brazil, centred on the state of Paraíba — the old spelling Parahyba is where the species name comes from. It is a lowland tropical spider of warm, humid forest with deep leaf litter.

On the ground it shelters in burrows it has enlarged itself, under fallen logs, among buttress roots and in crevices at the base of trees. It is strictly terrestrial: unlike the pink toe tarantula, which climbs, this species stays at floor level all its life. The Atlantic Forest is one of the most fragmented biomes on earth, and although L. parahybana is not formally listed as threatened, deforestation has steadily reduced the habitat available to it. The genus Lasiodora as a whole is Brazilian and South American, and includes the equally large Brazilian giant tawny red tarantula.

Are Brazilian salmon pink birdeaters venomous?

Yes, but the venom is the least of it. Like other New World terrestrial theraphosids, Lasiodora parahybana has venom tuned for insects and small vertebrates and no documented medical significance for humans. Clinical reviews of theraphosid bites record local pain, swelling and occasional muscle cramping from large species, with no deaths and no antivenom required.

The defence that actually matters is mechanical. When alarmed, the spider braces itself and rakes a cloud of barbed urticating hairs off the top of its abdomen with the hind legs. These are not stings; they are detachable bristles with backward-pointing barbs, and this species is generous with them.

Can Brazilian salmon pink birdeaters bite?

They can, and a bite from an animal this size is not trivial, but it is a last resort. The species is calm for its bulk and skittish rather than aggressive: its ladder of defence runs from bolting, to rearing with the front legs raised and fangs exposed, to flicking hairs, and only then to biting. Almost every recorded bite involves a spider being handled, cornered or pinned.

Because the fangs are long, the main injury is mechanical: two deep punctures, immediate sharp pain, bleeding and swelling. Local pain and stiffness can last a day or two, and secondary infection of the puncture wounds is the most likely complication. Wash the site thoroughly with soap and water, apply a cold pack, keep the limb elevated and use a simple over-the-counter painkiller. Seek medical care if the wound becomes hot, red and increasingly painful after a day, if swelling spreads up the limb, if you develop breathing difficulty or a widespread rash, or if urticating hairs may have entered an eye. Do not cut or suck the wound and do not apply home remedies.

The species is widely kept because it is large, hardy and fast-growing, which is why its behaviour is so well documented. That is background, not advice: handling is exactly what produces bites and hair exposure.

Ecological importance and behaviour of the salmon pink birdeater

On the forest floor this is a dominant invertebrate predator. It hunts at night from the mouth of its retreat and takes large insects — cockroaches, crickets, beetles, grasshoppers — along with the occasional frog, lizard or other small vertebrate that strays within reach. Birds are almost never on the menu, despite the name; the "birdeater" label attached to South American giants after an eighteenth-century engraving showed a tarantula feeding on a hummingbird.

Natural predators: adults are taken by coatis, opossums, snakes and large birds, and the spider wasps of the family Pompilidae are a specialised threat — a female stings a tarantula into paralysis and lays an egg on it. Spiderlings are eaten by everything from ants to frogs.

Prey–predator dynamics: because individual spiders are large, long-lived and site-faithful, a single adult exerts steady predation pressure on a small patch of forest floor for a decade or more. The very large clutch size is the counterweight: almost all spiderlings die before maturity.

Relationship with humans: the species is harmless to people in the wild and rarely encountered, since it stays in cover. The pressures that matter to it are habitat loss in the Atlantic Forest and, historically, collection for the international trade — captive breeding is now so productive that wild collection has largely lost its point.

Similar spiders and how to tell them apart

Quick facts

Did you know?

• The species was described in 1917 by the Brazilian zoologist Cândido Firmino de Mello-Leitão and named after Parahyba, the old spelling of Paraíba state where it was found.
• Despite the name, records of any tarantula eating a bird are rare. The label dates to a 1705 engraving by the naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian showing a South American tarantula with a hummingbird.
• By leg span it ranks among the largest spiders on earth, but a Goliath birdeater of the same span is considerably heavier — span and mass are not the same record.
• Its urticating hairs are shed into the silk of the retreat as well as flicked, so an abandoned burrow lining can still irritate skin.
• The Atlantic Forest it lives in has been reduced to a fraction of its original extent, which makes a restricted-range species like this one more vulnerable than its abundance in captivity suggests.

In summary, the Brazilian salmon pink birdeater is a genuine giant with a modest reputation for aggression and a mild venom. The number worth remembering is not its 10-inch span but the itch of its urticating hairs — that, and the fact that it hardly ever eats birds.