There’s a lot about tarantulas that we don’t know, but if you have a tarantula or are interested in getting one, you should know a little bit about how their bodies work – especially tarantula blood.

To know what’s going on inside your tarantula’s body, down to the very basics of their circulatory system, can prepare you for any first aid issues and also gives you a great understanding about how your spider operates and lives its life. Basically what I’m saying is, you may not really be thinking about this but learning about tarantula blood is important.

The first thing to know is that tarantula blood does NOT work like ours. The most important thing about this is that it does not clot. So if your tarantula gets hurt and starts to bleed, you need to work fast to seal the wound before they bleed out and die. If you’re not sure how to seal a wound or clot tarantula blood, check out this article for some helpful first aid tips. Tarantulas have an open circulatory system, and that’s what contributes to their inability to clot their own blood.

So not only does tarantula blood not have the ability to clot, but it’s also made of different properties. Human/mammal blood contains iron and is red when in contact with oxygen. Tarantula blood, on the other hand, contains copper. It is pretty much colorless in the spider’s body, but it seems that when it comes in contact with oxygen, tarantula blood is pale blue in color. And while human blood has hemoglobin to carry oxygen around our bodies, tarantulas have hemocyanin, which is much less efficient in transporting oxygen – which isn’t really an issue considering that tarantulas tend to sit still most of the time anyway lol.

If you’d like to learn more about tarantula anatomy, first aid, and care, please check out my full tarantula guide!