Creepy, crawly, and looking for love: These locations are where tarantulas are emerging this summer

Summer is here and it’s a great time to be outdoors. But while many vacationers will be making trips to the woods or even the National Parks, they won’t be the only ones taking advantage of the warmer conditions.

Across huge parts of the United States, male tarantulas will be leaving their burrows in search of females. This annual spectacle can take the form of thousands of the large spiders, seen moving as one across all sorts of terrain.

This is tarantula mating season and the practice can be seen across the country. According to USA Today, the most common states for this large-scale spider movement are California, Colorado, Kansas, New Mexico and Texas.

Dan McCamish, a senior environmental scientist with California State Parks, explained: “If you’re lucky enough you can sometimes see them in hordes crossing the roads at certain times of the year.”

“It’s a wild animal – it doesn’t want to be picked up and loved and hugged,” McCamish continued. “In general the species is very docile, but if you were to handle one they could bite you.”

“In truth they’re gentle, ecologically valuable animals,” he added. “Mostly they’re interested in escaping from confrontations – especially with something they know could squish them.”

They are most common in Western and Southwestern states, thriving in arid or semi-arid habitats. As such the driest summer months are when they are most likely to be active. However they aren’t entirely at home in the hottest conditions.

McCamish explained that they tend to avoid the daylight, meaning that you are unlikely to see them while out hiking.

“As with most things that live in the desert in the summer, they’re generally nocturnal,” McCamish said. “So unless you’re out in the middle of the night, which I don’t recommend for safety purposes, you likely won’t see them.”

“The males are the ones you’ll see crawling around. If you come upon a tarantula out in the wild and it’s wandering about, it’s likely a male. If you come upon one that’s sitting in its burrow or on top of a hole, it’s likely a female waiting for males to mate with,” he said.

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