For the first time, scientists have managed to breed rare spiders known as Montserrat tarantulas. 
 
 Little is known about these elusive, secretive creatures that live on the island of Montserrat, in the Caribbean. 
 
 "Breeding these tarantulas is a huge achievement for the team as very little is known about them. It's taken a lot of patience and care to reach this point," Gerardo Garcia, the curator of lower vertebrates and invertebrates at the Chester Zoo in the United Kingdom, said in a statement. [Goliath Birdeater: Images of a Colossal Spider] 
 
 Scientists first described the furry, translucent octopeds a century ago from a single male specimen. Later, researchers discovered that another threatened creature from Montserrat, the mountain chicken frog, preyed upon the spiders. 
 
 However, except for those isolated sightings, no one had ever glimpsed the tarantulas living in the wild. That all changed three years ago, when adult specimens were captured on the Caribbean island and brought to the zoo. 
 
 Researchers then spent the next three years trying to get the tarantulas to breed. Eventually, they succeeded, producing a bumper crop of 200 of the furry babies. It turned out that the male spiders had a very short life span and matured quickly, so finding just the right time to put the males and females together was key to getting them to breed, the researchers said. 
 
 Here, one of the Montserrat spiderlings in a test tube. The spiderlings could reveal new insights about the elusive Montserrat tarantulas. Credit: Chester Zoo 
 
 "The data we've been able to gather and knowledge we've developed over the last three years since the adults first arrived has led us to this first ever successful, recorded breeding, and hopefully these tiny tarantulas will uncover more secrets about the behaviour, reproduction and life cycle of the species," Garcia said. 
 
 Studying the new clutch of spiderlings could reveal new information about the Montserrat tarantula's reproduction and life cycle, and the effort and insights gleaned from the breeding process could also offer insights into other species, Garcia said. 
 
 Original article on Live Science. ||||| 08 12/08/2016 
 
 Montserrat tarantulas hatch in ‘world first’ at Chester Zoo 
 
 A clutch of about 200 rare and unusual tarantulas has hatched at Chester Zoo - a momentous event which has never been achieved before. 
 
 Invertebrate keepers at the zoo are the first in the world to successfully breed the Montserrat tarantulas, marking a crucial step towards discovering more about the mysterious species. 
 
 Native to the Caribbean island of Montserrat, very little information is known about the tarantulas and how they live. 
 
 But now, new behavioural observations made for the first time by experts at the zoo, have revealed crucial insights about the tarantulas which, prior to their breeding, had never before been seen in zoos or in the wild. 
 
 Dr Gerardo Garcia, curator of lower vertebrates and invertebrates at Chester Zoo, said: 
 
 Breeding these tarantulas is a huge achievement for the team as very little is known about them. It’s taken a lot of patience and care to reach this point. The data we’ve been able to gather and knowledge we’ve developed over the last three years since the adults first arrived has led us to this first ever successful, recorded breeding and hopefully these tiny tarantulas will uncover more secrets about the behaviour, reproduction and life cycle of the species. We know that males have a very short life span when compared with females and gauging their sexual maturity to select the best possible time to put them together for mating, is vital to the breeding process. It’s successes like this which really highlight the work that zoos are doing behind-the-scenes to conserve a range of endangered species, including the smaller, less known species that contribute to the world’s biodiversity. Importantly, the skills and techniques the team has developed with this new breeding success will now be transferred to other threatened species. 
 
 Montserrat tarantulas were first formally described by science from a single male over 100 years ago. Since then, a team of researchers have observed the tarantula as a prey item for another threatened species from the island, the mountain chicken frog. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The spiders have never been bred in captivity and very little is known about them 
 
 A clutch of about 200 Montserrat tarantulas has hatched at Chester Zoo - the first time this rare spider has been bred in captivity. 
 
 Very little is known about the species, found on just the one Caribbean island. 
 
 A dozen of the hairy brown animals were brought back by a zoo keeper in 2013, after observing them in the wild on multiple field trips. 
 
 Three years later, after much study and behavioural management, one female has produced 200 British-born baby spiders. 
 
 "It's kind of a race against time, whether you can synchronise the sexual maturity between individuals," said Chester Zoo's curator of lower vertebrates, Gerardo Garcia. 
 
 'Popping out of the earth' 
 
 Part of the problem is that male Montserrat tarantulas live for about 2.5 years at the most, whereas the females live much longer and develop much more slowly. 
 
 The few males Dr Garcia had collected, therefore, were a precious resource. There were nervous moments for the team when they started match-making. 
 
 As with many other invertebrates, those encounters were risky for the males. 
 
 "The female can take it as a prey, rather than a partner," Dr Garcia told the BBC. "There were a lot of sweaty moments." 
 
 Image copyright Gerardo Garcia/Chester Zoo Image caption Risky business: Montserrat tarantulas mating in their enclosure at Chester 
 
 He and his colleagues observed a very tentative courtship ritual, in which the male drums out an elaborate rhythm on the female's web - which is spun on the ground near her burrow. 
 
 Even after three apparently successful encounters, there was another anxious wait for Dr Garcia. All three pregnant females disappeared. 
 
 "They literally dig a burrow in the ground, and they're gone," he said. "They don't feed, they don't show up, we don't know what's going on. You just have to leave it for several months and see what happens. 
 
 "Then eventually... spiders started popping out of the earth like crazy. From one single burrow, one female, we had about 200 tarantulas - tiny spiderlings." 
 
 Image copyright Gerardo Garcia/Chester Zoo Image caption The spiderlings are just a few millimetres across 
 
 Image copyright Chester Zoo Image caption Researchers will now be able to observe the tarantula's complete life cycle 
 
 Those babies - the first spiderlings of their species to be observed by scientists - are now being very well looked after. 
 
 "We're keeping them in small, individual pots," Dr Garcia said. "A member of staff is feeding them one-by-one with small flies, at the beginning. Then we'll go for bigger prey like crickets." 
 
 In a year or two, these spiders will in turn become part of the breeding program. After all, there are no males left in the small colony of adults; they die after mating. 
 
 Frog food 
 
 Being able to see the tarantula's complete life cycle is valuable, Dr Garcia explained, because there is much to learn about these animals. 
 
 "We don't know too much about tarantulas in general, in the Caribbean. It's a taxonomic group that's very uncertain." 
 
 In fact, the Montserrat species has only been formally described on the basis of a single, male specimen, collected 100 years ago. 
 
 Image copyright Chester Zoo Image caption "Suddenly spiders started popping out of the earth" 
 
 Image copyright Chester Zoo Image caption Family resemblance? Adult Montserrat tarantulas are 15-20cm across 
 
 "At the moment we're working with a specialist at the Natural History Museum to describe the other sex, the female." 
 
 It was that lack of knowledge that led Dr Garcia to collect some wild adults on a conference trip to Montserrat three years ago. 
 
 He became interested in the tarantulas on a previous field trip, when he and a team of other zoologists made a striking observation: these 15-20cm spiders are a prey item for the Caribbean's famous - and critically endangered - mountain chicken frog. 
 
 These very large frogs had been known to eat crickets, millipedes, smaller frogs and lizard, and even bats. But when Dr Garcia and colleagues reported three of the frogs eating tarantulas in the wild, it was a surprise. 
 
 Image copyright Gonçalo M. Rosa / Tropical Zoology Image caption The tarantulas make a tasty morsel for the endangered mountain chicken frog 
 
 Image copyright Thinkstock Image caption Montserrat is home to the Soufriere Hills Volcano, active since 1995 
 
 "You would never imagine a frog would go for a big tarantula, but in fact it does," he said. 
 
 This evidence plays into Dr Garcia's view of the hairy spiders as a beautiful part of the natural world, rather than a threat. 
 
 This particular species does bite, and is too jumpy to be a good pet, but is not dangerous to humans. 
 
 "We try to avoid that perception about dangerous, poisonous or horrible species," said the zoo keeper, who opened his Montserrat tarantula shipment at home with his children. 
 
 "If a frog can kill and eat a tarantula, they cannot be so bad!" 
 
 Image copyright Gerardo Garcia Image caption Dr Garcia collected the spiders on a conference trip to Montserrat in 2013 
 
 Image copyright Gerardo Garcia Image caption About a dozen specimens made the trip back to the UK 
 
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– Hundreds of tarantulas emerging from the ground might seem like the stuff of nightmares, but to scientists at the UK's Chester Zoo, it's a dream come true. About 200 baby Montserrat tarantulas recently hatched at the zoo, marking the first time the rare spiders have been bred in captivity. Few have ever spotted the tarantulas in the wild on the Caribbean island of Montserrat, reports Live Science. But in 2013, zoo curator Gerardo Garcia captured some of the hairy brown spiders—which reach up to 8 inches across in adulthood and don't bite—and took them to the zoo to be bred. That proved easier said than done as researchers soon discovered the males mature quickly and live for only two and a half years, reports the BBC. Females live longer and mature more slowly, and can also see a male "as a prey, rather than a partner," says Garcia. "There were a lot of sweaty moments." Researchers witnessed courtship rituals in which a male drummed on a female's web, before three pregnant females vanished. "They literally dig a burrow in the ground," says Garcia. Several months later, "spiders started popping out of the earth like crazy. From one single burrow, one female, we had about 200 tarantulas." The successful breeding "is a huge achievement" as little is known about the tarantulas, which are a food source for the Caribbean's massive, yet critically endangered, mountain chicken frog, Garcia adds in a statement. (Hanging out with a tarantula could cure your spider phobia.)