Chris Kosky, age 12, of Sarasota, Florida, for her question:
Is the tarantula really a spider?
Yes she is. When it comes to spiders, many people take definite sides. Many of us admire them. We waited with baited breath while Arabella spun her perfect web in the orbiting space lab, with no gravity to guide, her. But some people panic at the sight of an ordinary little spider. The furry brown tarantulas, as big as a fist, scare them out of their wits.
The original tarantula is a one inch member of the wolf spider family. Like all her close kin, she spins no web and pursues her prey like a wily wolf. During the Middle Ages, she stirred up a frantic fuss around the town of Taranto in southern Italy. Apparently this furry grey wolf spider bit some of the people.
Like all spiders, her fangs are fed by poisonous glands. In most cases, the fangs are too fragile and the venom too weak to do much harm to humans. But her bite is more venomous than most and some of the people suffered serious poisoning. This was, remember, during the Dark Ages when a lot of medical treatment was merely guesswork. And the treatment for wolf spider bites turned out to be downright fantastic.
The people of Taranto believed that the victim could be cured by dancing—dancing to a state of complete exhaustion. So when a spider bite was reported, the fiddlers were sent for and the victim danced a frantic dance until he dropped in his tracks. At this point, he was assumed to be cured. Apparently others joined in the performance and a good time was had by all. The dance of Taranto became the popular taran¬tella. The spider of Taranto became known as the tarantula. Several similar wolf spiders were known and feared throughout Europe. Then Columbus discovered the New World, and Spanish explorers
discovered several unbelievable spiders in Central and South America. If the little wolf spiders of Europe were a menace, surely these huge, hairy fellows must be monstrous menaces. It seemed logical to call them all multitudes they add tinges of green or brown, blue or even red to the waters of the sea.