For reasons that I don't fully understand, tarantulas are just very common here.

You know, it's possibl that there's all sorts of things that we know very little about.

So it's just, it's a wonderful opportunity just to be out here spending time with the tarantulas.

Come on.

Come, come, come.

Atta girl.

Get some exercise.

We need to get your - You need to get your steps up.

For all my years working with tarantulas.

This is the place where I have found the most tarantulas.

Were during the mating season.

And so this is where you see the males out.

They are walking around looking for females.

And so this is a time where you can find animals relatively easily.

So I'm just doing 30 minute trials of male tarantula activity.

I'm also tracking distances, that they moving over long periods of time.

With the 30 minutes, I'm just checking every ten minutes and flagging and the calculating the those distances.

And it gives me some idea of the rate of movement that they are potentially continuing, you know for eight hours, I don't know.

And so every ten minutes we put another flag adding up to 30 minutes.

One of my overall goals is just understanding better the life history of these animals.

We actually know very little about these animals in their natural environment.

I'm looking at different types of behaviors and also the physiology.

So you know, how do animals survive when it is really hot when it is cold.

When you're able to watch them for 30 minutes, which isn't an incredibly long time, but I get to see some of those behaviors as they're walking around in their environments.

Each of these little pieces adds to our big picture.

Here he is.

There are still so many more little pieces that we can keep adding.

Gotcha.

Sorry, little guy.