I’ve spoken a lot about tarantulas and whether or not they have the ability to “play” with toys or just randomly interact with their surroundings. This has been at the heart of my observation when giving my tarantulas, Spidey (G. rosea) and Blinky (A. chalcodes) objects to interact with in their tanks.

Now, I personally don’t believe that tarantulas have the brainpower or biological bandwidth to have drives to play or have “fun” – but considering how little we actually know about these creatures, I wouldn’t say I know that with 100% certainty. And sometimes the things I observe my tarantulas do seriously makes me wonder what is going on in their little spider worlds.

For example, recently I’ve witnessed my sling, Blinky, playing this terrible little game with me, where for days I would repeatedly have to refill their little water dish – to only find it filled with dirt a few hours later!

This is something that Spidey used to do a lot, and I can’t help but think Spidey taught Blinky her ways! I mean, perhaps Blinky just really didn’t like having water in their dish and perhaps it was impacting the humidity or moisture levels of their enclosure. But I would just LOVE to know what they’re thinking when they see a clean water dish and have the automatic instinct to fill it with dirt – every time! It’s so weird that I think there must be some kind of silliness or thought behind it. And by the way, it got worse as the week went on. After several days of playing their little water dish game with me, Blinky decided to completely disrespect me and BURY the water dish. I mean this baby just does NOT want water lol. I can’t understand it. Oh, and did I mention that they very sneakily decided to make their burrow/tunnel UNDER the water dish and make it a very important part of their burrow so that I couldn’t dig it up easily?

And Spidey has been doing her own mischief as well. While she’s been good about letting the water STAY in her water dish, she made quite the mess out of her tank recently. Not only did she turn her jar lid over and lean it up against her glass dome, BUT in doing this, she actually uncovered her old bottle cap, which has been hidden under the substrate for months! She moved the bottle cap to another part of the tank, only to fill it up with more dirt and partially bury it.

I have no idea if there is any rhyme or reason to what my tarantulas do, but some of their behavior is so specific, ridiculous and silly that I can’t help but think that they’re playing jokes on me or engaging in some strange form of play. What do you think? Do your spiders do crazy stuff like this???