My name is Richard Stewart. I run a YouTube channel called The Tarantula Collective

where I make videos about tarantulas, scorpions, and other invertebrates.

Back in college, Richard was actually scared of spiders.

And I had a professor that kind of challenged me and said that my fear isn't actually of the

spiders. It's just a fear of the unknown. And so to conquer his fear, Richard got a tarantula.

His roommate wasn't thrilled. But 20 years later, he's still keeping tarantulas.

He's part of what you might call the spider internet. His YouTube channel has 117,000 subscribers,

sells tarantula merch, and it's pretty fun.

Don't let the beard fool you. I am neither an expert nor professional. I'm just a guy with a lot

of tarantulas and a few cameras. It just wants to share my experiences and opinions with you that

I've gathered over the past couple decades. Over the past few pandemic years, tarantula keeping

has exploded. You don't need much space or money. You may be repaying a hundred bucks for the

tarantula and maybe 50 bucks for the enclosure and then 50 bucks for everything else that it needs.

So it's low cost, low maintenance. I mean, it's just one of the easiest species out there to keep.

It's almost like having a house plan. That's also meant that the spider internet, or should I say

spider web? I'm sorry, has grown exponentially. There are Facebook forums and places to buy and

sell spiders and mystery spider unboxings on YouTube. Hello everyone. Welcome back to my channel.

This week I've been sent a mystery box by the spider web. It's what it sounds like. You pay a

cent amount, order your box online and then you get an assortment of invertebrates. All right,

so the first one from the mystery box that we're going to unpack is going to be the Tee Albow

Plusses, which is the curly hair, an absolute classic. And here they are. The tiny tarantula

about the size of a thumbnail is just hanging out in a little plastic tube. There are a lot of

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