# The Flight of the Baby Tarantulas - Source: Insect Adventures (insect-adventures.gutenberg.org), Public domain, J. Henri Fabre, retold for young people by Louise Seymour Hasbrouck, pictures by Elias Goldberg, 1917, via Project Gutenberg - Reading level: Grade 5 - Subjects: Bugs and Spiders, Animals, How Things Work - Topics: little, mother, threads, ones, spiders, tarantula - Length: 651 words, about 5 min - By: J. Henri Fabre, retold by Louise Seymour Hasbrouck - Original: - Page: - Open in Sprouts: As the month of March comes to an end, the mother Tarantula is outside her burrow, squatting on the parapet at the entrance. It is time for the youngsters to leave her. She lets them do as they please, seeming perfectly indifferent to what is happening. The departure begins during glorious weather, in the hottest hours of the morning. First these, then those, of the little ones, according as they feel themselves soaked with sunshine, leave the mother in batches, run about for a moment on the ground, and then quickly reach the trellis-work of the cage in my laboratory, which they climb with surprising quickness. They all make for the heights, though their mother is accustomed to stay on the solid ground. There is an upright ring at the top of the cage. The youngsters hurry to it. They hang out threads across the opening; they stretch others from the ring to the nearest points of the trellis-work. On these foot-bridges they perform slack-rope exercises. The tiny legs open out from time to time as though to reach the most distant points. I begin to realize that they wish to go higher. I top the trellis with a branch as high again. The little Spiders hastily scramble up it, reach the tip of the topmost twigs and from there send out threads that fasten themselves to every surrounding object. These are suspension-bridges; and my beasties nimbly run along them, incessantly passing to and fro. They seem to wish to climb still higher. I take a nine-foot reed, with tiny branches spreading right up to the top, and place it above the cage. The little Tarantulas clamber to the very summit. Here they send out longer threads, which are left to float, and which again form bridges when their loose ends touch some object. The rope-dancers embark upon them and form garlands which the least breath of air swings daintily. One cannot see the threads at all unless they come between the eyes and the sun; the Spiders look as if they were dancing in the air. Then, suddenly, shaken by the air-currents, the delicate mooring breaks and flies through space. Behold the little Spiders fly off and away, hanging to their threads! If the wind be favorable, they can land at great distances. The bands of little Spiders keep on leaving thus for a week or two, if the weather is fine. On cloudy days, none dreams of going. The travelers need the kisses of the sun, which give them energy and vigor. At last, the whole family has disappeared, carried afar by its flying-ropes. The mother is alone. The loss of her children hardly seems to distress her. She goes on with her hunting with greater energy, now that she is not hampered with her coat of little ones. She will have other families, become a grandmother and a great-grandmother, for the Tarantulas live several years. In this species of Tarantula, as we have seen, a sudden instinct arises in the young ones, to disappear, as promptly and forever, a few hours later. This is the climbing-instinct, which is unknown to the older Tarantula and soon forgotten by the young ones, who alight upon the ground and wander there for many a long day before they begin to build their burrows. Neither of them dreams of climbing to the top of a grass-stalk. Yet here we have the young Tarantula, wishing to leave her mother and to travel far away by the easiest and swiftest methods, suddenly becoming an enthusiastic climber. We know her object. From on high, finding a wide space beneath her, she sends a thread floating. It is caught by the wind, and carries her hanging to it. We have our aeroplanes; she too possesses her flying-machine. She makes it in her hour of need, and when the journey is finished thinks no more about it. ## Picture credits - Elias Goldberg, Public domain ()