Bitten by an Orange Baboon Tarantula

I have more than one hundred Orange Baboon Tarantulas ranging in size from about 2 cm to fully grown adults. They have a very intense orange colour and they are indeed very beautiful to look at, especially after a moult.


But BEWARE!! They have a very nasty attitude. They are very defensive and will readily give a threat display when disturbed.

This photo below shows the OBT in threat display. Look carefully at those fangs.

We will now take a closer look at those fangs. ( See photo below )

During the last 2 months, I was bitten by an Orange Baboon Tarantula on 3 occasions.
All those bites happened because I was not careful when handling them.
You see, I always take photos of my tarantulas whenever I have the time. On those 3 occasions, it was my fault. I purposely disturb them so that they would give a threat display. That's what I wanted to photograph. But 3 times the same thing happened. When they get very irritated, they would simply jump out from the container and of course, it would land on either my hand or my legs as I was sitting down.

The first time, I was bitten on my left arm. I felt a very slight pain, like an ant bite. I did not think much about it as that particular OBT was only about an inch in size. The fireworks came about 20 minutes later. The area around the bite was burning - intense burning. Imagine a hot electric iron placed on your hand and it was there for about 20 hours. Painkillers have no effect.
There was swelling and then numbness. The crunch came the next day. There was muscular cramp in my left hand. The cramp came on and off. I had to take muscular relaxants to ease the suffering. On the third and fourth day the intense pain subsided but the cramp persisted until the seventh day.

On the 2nd occasion, I was bitten by another OBT on my left thigh. It fell out when I opened the container. I knew exactly what to expect. The same old thing happened again - intense hot pain and muscular cramp.

The 3rd time was two weeks ago. This time I was bitten by a 3 inch OBT. It was in threat display as I was focussing my camera on it when it suddenly jumped out and landed on my left ankle. Instantly it bit my ankle and ran away. I was expecting the same old thing again. Yes, it happened but thistime it was worse. The intense burning pain can make a grown man cry. The muscular cramp affects the calf muscle, the ankle and the toes. Hospitals do not have tarantula anti-venoms. I suffered for a week.

Look at the photos of my swollen left ankle.