Tarantula Molting

We found a tarantula the other day and put him in our “calm down” bucket so that we could photograph him the next day. We also added a cockroach in case he got hungry. When we checked on him the next morning the cockroach was dead and there were two tarantulas. We were a tad freaked out by this but after further research we figured out that the tarantula had molted overnight. They are very vunerable to predators at that time, so he was safe at least. They don’t eat during this period so we shouldn’t have added the cockroach and one definitely shouldn’t put a more aggressive insect in with them while they are molting. Everything came out ok and this image is of a shiny, newly coated arthro.