Yea u can hold a tarantula for a few minutes but the one I wanted kicked hairs lol. We went and looked at it and thank heaven it had been sold and personally it was kinda ugly lol. We got a tegu and a argus monitor instead since we had the big set ups just sitting here with nothing in them lol. Note to self stop going to that guys store lol. For the tegu and the argus it was less then 300 so im hoping it was worth it for them. He learned the hard way about the argus though. They like to whip lol and he wants to hold it.