National Tarantula Appreciation Day – August 8, 2025

History of National Tarantula Appreciation Day

Tarantulas have long existed on Earth for almost 120 million years. Known as the mother of the spider species, the first trace of tarantulas has been discovered by historians in the Americas. But it wasn’t until 108 million years ago when spiders, the ancestors of tarantulas, began existing in Africa. These are the species that are most common today and widely exist in every corner of the planet.

About 108 million years ago, tarantulas established their presence in India in two lineages: one lineage is known as the tree-dwellers, and the other one existed in the burrows. When a tectonic shift separated India from Madagascar 95 million years ago, the existence of tarantula slowly spread out in Asia. After this wave, spiders quickly filled in ecological spaces as they found their survival niche. Since Asia is a vast, subtropical continent, this species evolved and adapted through different habitat and climate conditions. The spider’s endemic family started to rise, including Ornithoctoninae, Thrigmopoeinae, and Poecilotheriinae. Today, Asia is a host of thousands of spider species.

Tarantulas later became a literary and mythological symbol. In the eighth century A.D., the Roman poet Ovid wrote a poem called “Metamorphoses” which tells the story of Arachne’s transformation into a tarantula. This was retold by Dante Aligheri in 1308 in his ‘Divine Comedy, Purgatorio.’ However, the bad reputation of tarantulas existed after Swiss novelist Jeremiag Gotthelf wrote “The Black Spider,” an allegorical novel that depicts spiders as the devil’s evil works. But in 1952, E.B. White redeemed the image of the spiders in the literary world after writing the children’s novel “Charlotte’s Web” which depicted spiders in a positive light.