It’s easy to fall in love with tarantulas when tarantula Facebook groups are exploding with beautiful photos of fuzzy spiders with shiny googly eyes (8 of them) and the normalization of handling photos. When you’re new to the game, it’s easy to get caught up in this excitement and start to think of all the fun things you can do when you get a tarantula. You might even start to warm up to tarantulas so much that you completely fall in love and have the urge to cuddle one. All of a sudden, you’re researching tarantula sellers and pet stores, planning for your entrance into the tarantula hobby. What should you do when this happens?

Get a dog. Or a cat. Get a pet that actually benefits from physical and emotional contact and take very good care of them. Sadly, a tarantula is not the pet for you if that’s what you’re looking for in your life. There are many reasons to get a tarantula: to learn more about them, to have a fascinating and beautiful creature to admire, or to have the pleasure of caring for a pet that is different. But cuddling and wanting to hold something is not one of the reasons you should be thinking about a pet tarantula.

I know this is a no brainer and repetitive for most experienced tarantula owners but it needs to be said over and over, and I think this is easy for beginners to miss when they’re excited about all of the handling photos they see, many of which do not come with disclaimers. Tarantulas do not like being held, touched, or handled. Some may tolerate it better than others due to more docile attitudes, but as far as we know, tarantulas don’t have the emotional capacity to have benefits of this like a dog or cat. Tarantulas do not seek out affection and actually prefer to be left alone. So when we have an animal that is potentially dangerous, skittish and fragile, we are putting ourselves and the spider at risk if we choose to impose our need for physical touch on it.

It’s always important that we respect the animals that we take care of. Just because we take care of them, feed them, and look after them does not mean that they owe us – this is what we signed up for as pet owners. So like your dog and cat don’t owe you anything, neither does your tarantula – and they won’t care, because they don’t share the same emotional wiring that you do.

So if you feel yourself looking into tarantulas because you envision a loving future between you and your spider full of butt rubs and cuddles, STOP. Reflect on the kind of pet that would actually be right for you, and refrain from getting a tarantula until you are ready to have a pet you can love from a distance.

BUT if you’ve read through this, accepted that you can’t cuddle a tarantula and STILL want to get one, check out my tarantula guide – it’ll teach you everything you need to know about tarantula care!