KATIPO IN CAPTIVITY.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 771, 21 March 1910, Page 8

KATIPO IN CAPTIVITY.

THEIR HABITS OBSERVED. Since ■ mention was made some time ago, of, the ;presence .of ' katipo in some numbers at various spots in the vicinity of Wellington, collectors have been at work, and several people have obtained bottles aid jars of this pugnacious and curious little creature —some quite recently from Lyall Bay—and have since had them under observation. In these cases the results of the observations were' practically the same in each case. Whenever several katipo I were- confined in the same : bottle, in compaiy . with flies, the flies showed no apparent fear of ■ the '• spiders, but walked past and over thorn, and sometimes-, under'.them, as if the whole' of their novel and rather perilous surroundings 'were a joke., If anything, 'the katipo seemed rather solicitous to keep away from, the flies, and the first attacks, when hunger imI posed on . the spiders the "necessity of being up and doing,, were never made on these. "

In each case—generally some hours after being first placed in captivity—one of the katipo would plainly show by his movements that he was apprehensive o< the designs of' some one of his comrades, arid that comrade, just as persistently, kept an ot« on his intended victim. After some hours the spider which intended to take the aggressive—always the largest one in the bottle—ascended the glass for some distance, spun a few threads from side to side of the bottle, and then, descending: by a , thread perpendicularly on to his quarry, hit the latter at the junction of thorax and_ head.. fle then ascended again with the. defunct "mate," and proceeded to eat him, the meal usually occupying about twelve hours. After that, : some, twenty-four or thirty-six hours of comparative torpor would ensue, the appearance of the creature being considerably darker, and the red stripe on the body proportionately brighter. In a day or two an attack would be made on another katipo, but the flies in every case were the last resort. These were never molested while any other food remained in' the bottle. The katipo is, apparently, before everything else, a slayer of his own species.