Harpactira pulchripes (Golden Blue-Legged Baboon) 0.5" | 4" FEMALE
Photo by Dylan Tinney, Eight Deadly Sins The Golden Blue Leg Baboon Tarantula, Harpactira pulchripes Pocock is certainly amongst the most strikingly colored theraphosids from the African continent and a gem of the tarantula world. At maturity, these members of the subfamily Harpactirinae (baboon spiders) are characterized by having charcoal-colored chelicerae along with a golden to rusty orange carapace, femurs and abdomen with ashy bean-like flecks alluding to their underlying black exoskeleton. However, the dorsal face of the patella through tarsus of each leg screams gorgeous metallic, electric sky blue outlined in a pinstripe margin of black, with the ventral face of the leg wildly contrasting with fiery gold tones. Under some lighting, the blue portions of the legs also take on a nice tinge of gray, resmbling metallic blue jeans. If you want a wildly colorful baboon spider H. pulchripes is in a league of its own. H. pulchripes is an Old World fossorial (burrowing) tarantula reachi