Rodrigo Orozco is a Guadalajara-based businessman, who in his spare time also plays the role of “foster father” to 6,000 young tarantulas.
Recently, Orozco installed his brood of hairy spiders in a new home, the Ecological Center of Pinar de la Venta, located eight kilometers west of town on the road to Nogales. The center held an open house on October 29, drawing a crowd of over 40 people curious to know more about tarantulas.
Orozco has been interested in arthropods, the biological grouping that includes spiders, since his childhood, but 18 years ago made a decision that changed his life dramatically.
“I discovered what sort of methods were being used by poachers in Mexico to catch and sell tarantulas,” he says.
A typical example, explains the spider expert, is the individual who spends days catching wild tarantulas and stuffing them into a suitcase.
“There may be 700 tarantulas in the suitcase and the poacher, if he is lucky, may sell a dozen. All the others die.”
Since the only tarantulas which are easy to catch are males wandering about in search of females (who never leave their burrows), a single poacher can literally exterminate all the tarantulas in a given area.
This situation gave Orozco the idea of raising tarantulas in captivity and selling them cheaply, in order to put the poachers out of business.
Orozco began by going to Semarnat (the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources) and informing them that he wanted to breed tarantulas.
“They told me I was crazy but I received the permission I needed and started my project,” relates Orozco. “At first I had to do a lot of experimenting because the people who knew something about the subject didn’t trust me and wouldn’t help me. So I visited a lot of libraries and I traveled to the American Tarantula Society in the United States. Finally, I figured I knew enough to start raising tarantulas, and after a lot of ups and downs, here I am.”
The plan must be working as Orozco is now exporting legal, captivity-bred Mexican tarantulas to the United States. “It’s the first time anyone has done this and it really is destroying the poachers’ business,” he says.
At the inauguration of the center, Orozco took visitors through three rooms in his new tarantula sanctuary. The first is dedicated to raising crickets. “I raise them to feed the tarantulas, which eat 15,000 crickets every week.”
The second room contains an incubator and thousands of baby tarantulas in small containers. The incubator continually rotates an egg sac in 80 percent humidity at 28 degrees Centigrade.
“Shortly after the babies are born, I separate them,” says Orozco. “Otherwise they would eat each other.”
The third room is for breeding. “The male produces a drumming sound which entices the female. His legs are actually equipped with special hooks which he uses to hold back the female’s fangs so she won’t eat him while they are mating. Tarantulas are very special creatures.”
According to the breeder, Tarantulas are found everywhere in Mexico and none of them are dangerous to humans.
“Right now 85 species are known in this country, but the number is likely to go to 180 very soon, which will make Mexico the country with the most species in the world.”
Orozco says certain Mexican tarantulas are considered the most docile in the world, and therefore make the most popular pets. If you do manage to anger a Mexican tarantula, he says, the worst thing it might do is to turn around and shake its rear end at you, releasing nearly invisible “urticating hairs” which would merely give a human being an itch, but, if sniffed by a predator such as a dog, would send the animal away yelping.
If you have questions about Mexican tarantulas, you may find the answers on Orozco’s excellent web page, tarantulasdemexico.com. Just click on the button for English.
For a more personal approach, Orozco gives a fascinating talk and Powerpoint show about tarantulas, millipedes, vinegaroons and other innocent creatures which are falsely accused of being deadly, but aren’t. To book his talk or to visit the Tarantula Center, contact him at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..">.