Hello everyone.

My female spider bp is about a year old and has bitten me the past couple of times I’ve tried to take her out. Two weeks ago she bit me when I took her out to handle her, and she bit me again yesterday while I was preparing to move her 30 minutes away to my parent’s house where I’m staying now.

She’s bitten me about 7 times now (since I adopted her in August) and each time it’s been a bite-and-hold, which I’m assuming is a feeding response. She’s never struck at me in a defensive way (except one time when I spooked her and she head butted me). I’m not sure why she believes my hands are food, because I always wash my hands thoroughly before handling her. I’ve even made sure to avoid handling her on days when I’ve touched raw chicken. I think she may still have problems correctly identifying what’s food, since she’s tried to eat a Sherpa lined hoodie when she was about 3 months old, and she tried to eat a towel that I was cleaning blood up with (after she bit me two weeks ago).

I’m concerned it may be due to her spider genes. She flops upside-down sometimes and wobbles during feeding, and when she bit me the 4th time it seemed like she had trouble letting go (she wiggled her mouth around like she was trying to get loose but was still snagged so I helped her). I noticed she doesn’t really ball up either, and I’ve only seen her do it once.

I’m also not sure if there’s a good way to get them to let go after a bite. Two times when I was in a hurry, because I needed to be somewhere soon, I submerged her in lukewarm water until she released her grasp. The other times I just waited, but she would take around 20-45 minutes to let go. Hopefully I can stop her from biting me in the first place so this won’t be a problem.

I’m still kinda nervous around her which I’m sure does not help, but I’ve always had a mild fear of snakes. One of the reasons I decided to get her was to help me overcome it since I’m trying to become a biologist and might need to work with them one day. Her biting me has not been helping assuage these fears (possibly reinforcing them) and it doesn’t help that when she does bite me she acts normal - she’ll nose around and smell a bit, then suddenly open her mouth and close it on my hand without striking, and wrap around it. It’s a surprise as to when it will occur, because it has happened when I first take her out, after she’s been out for a while, and right as I’m putting her back into her tub.

Also I feed her once a week usually on Friday, and try to only handle her Sunday-Thursday to give her time to relax and digest.

I hope this wasn’t too much information to read through.
Any help would be appreciated as I’m sure I must be doing something wrong.

TL;DR: Snake keeps biting me like she’s trying to eat my hand, and it’s becoming more frequent. Unsure what’s wrong and what to do.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk