Southern desert and mountains<\/b>:<\/b> <\/b>Eastern San Diego County including Cuyamaca Rancho State Park and the Stonewall Mine in the Laguna Mountain region. Anza-Borrego Desert State Park within the Colorado Desert of Southern California, particularly in the Borrego Palm Canyon and Yaqui Well areas. <\/li>\n<\/ul>\nExperts say the male spiders may travel up to 20 miles throughout the mating season to find a connection, but the distance depends on the weather, food availability and other environmental conditions. <\/p>\n
While this is a solitary and competitive journey, you might wander across a swarm of tarantulas who happen to emerge at the same time. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnecdotally, people can experience this \u2018horde\u2019 or \u2018swarm\u2019 in the desert during mating season late at night, if conditions are right, when hundreds can be seen crossing remote desert roads slowly on their mating search, McCamish said. <\/p>\n
![\"Walnut](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/1754394792_177_\")
<\/p>\n
A male tarantula on the prowl for a female in Mount Diablo State Park.<\/p>\n
(Susanne Rust \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
How tarantulas court and the timeline for eggs hatching<\/p>\n
When a male locates a female tarantula, he \u201cinitiates a courtship ritual involving rhythmic tapping and vibration to signal his presence and avoid predation,\u201d McCamish said. <\/p>\n
If the female is receptive, mating occurs. <\/p>\n
\u201cMales don\u2019t live very long, and females often aggressively rebuff potential mates, so small or weak males may never successfully reproduce,\u201d Yanega added.<\/p>\n
On average, males live seven to 10 years, whereas females can reach 20 to 25 years or more, according to experts.<\/p>\n
After mating, the female may eat her counterpart, which is why some males try to escape.<\/p>\n
The female will then store the sperm in structures called spermathecae and eventually construct an egg sac where the eggs remain until they hatch the following spring or summer, said Sarah Crews, from the California Academy of Sciences\u2019 department of entomology. The baby tarantulas are known as \u201cspiderlings.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe spiderlings probably hang out for a bit, then disperse and make their own burrows, likely not traveling too far,\u201d Crews said. <\/p>\n
Can a tarantula kill or injure me?<\/p>\n
Tarantulas are harmless unless grabbed.<\/p>\n
Researchers say their bodies are covered with \u201cirritant hairs\u201d that, if touched, can cause dermatitis and a rash. When a spider needs to protect itself from a predator, it rubs its hairs to ward off the danger. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is why you sometimes see tarantulas with \u2018bald spots,\u2019\u201d Crews said. \u201cThey do it when they are stressed, so if you come across one and it starts doing that, best to leave it alone … while it won\u2019t hurt humans, you don\u2019t want to stress out the poor guy \u2014 he has enough problems at this point\u201d. <\/p>\n
Tarantulas are often vilified in movies, but they are actually shy, slow-moving and reluctant to bite. <\/p>\n
Native tarantulas in the United States pose no serious threat to humans and only bite if severely provoked, McCamish said.<\/p>\n
The venom from a tarantula bite typically won\u2019t kill a human, but it can cause minor pain, swelling or itching. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you suffer from arachnophobia, this is the time of year when you\u2019re most likely to run into…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":120786,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[53587,276,75049,5980,75052,75050,75051,69122,75053,6475,159,75054,68170,75048,6620,67,132,68,837],"class_list":{"0":"post-120785","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-burrow","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-danny-mccamish","11":"tag-desert","12":"tag-doug-yanega","13":"tag-female-tarantula","14":"tag-male-tarantula","15":"tag-mate","16":"tag-mating-search","17":"tag-night","18":"tag-science","19":"tag-senior-environmental-scientist","20":"tag-spider","21":"tag-tarantula-mating-season","22":"tag-time","23":"tag-united-states","24":"tag-unitedstates","25":"tag-us","26":"tag-wildlife"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114976024368352565","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120785","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120785\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/120786"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}