Mexican Red Knee Tarantula Molting

Sow while most people are fearful of crossing paths with spiders and other creepy crawlers, there’s a small group of individuals out there who cherish the critters enough to call them pets.

Scientists believe that spiders, and more specifically tarantulas, have been around for millions of years, but it's only within the last few centuries that they went from being wild critters to creepy-crawly pets. How anyone could love one of these is beyond me, especially given their not-so-cute habits.

While most tarantulas eat insects and grasshoppers, some kinds can eat prey as large as snakes, lizards, or small birds.

- Time lapse video of my pet Mexican Red Knee tarantula, Soloria molting this weekend. Entire process took about 3 hours in real time.