Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Spider Web

Just came across a new Yahoo! Group called cocoonswapping. It seems full of people with a keen interest in spiders, and I cannot fault them for that. Unfortunately they also seem keen on swapping spider cocoons/egg sacs, and doing so on a global scale. The issue of invasive species has already arisen in the group, which was just created this past month (see this message), and obviously group members have good intentions and are not planning to release the spiders into the wild. However, I still am concerned about the concept of sharing species across continents, especially something very tiny that seems like it would be hard to keep contained. And according to this article from the American Tarantula Society, it's legal to import spiders into the USA - I'm not sure about regulations in other countries. Yikes.

1 comment:

Omar Basawad said...

Swapping spiders and cocoons! Never heard of that before. Not a good idea at all and I find this very wrong. It's always best to live the spiders, and any other wildlife, where they are.