Talk:Spider fighting

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I believe spider fighting is more popular in the rural areas than here in Manila, where spiders themselves are rare and various ordinances are enacted against it.--Lenticel ^(talk) 04:48, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Picture

I have access to sugar cane fields where the sons of itenerant cane cutters collect fighting spiders, however, these arachnids only become ubiquitous when the summer becomes exceptionally dry, as was the case during the last El Niño season. Will provide pic at the earliest opportunity. -- • Kurt Guirnela • ‡ ^Talk 02:25, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Hope to see the pic soon, I very curious on what species it is.—Lenticel ^(talk) 04:57, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

I recently uploaded some images of fighting spiders. -- • Kurt Guirnela • ‡ ^Talk 08:26, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm curious about this sport

I assumed from the text that a spider fell off the stick, lost the battle and lived to fight another day - however from looking at the photos it seems that the spider that loses, ends up as lunch for the winner.

Is getting eaten a by-product of losing, but not required as far as the rules go, for a loss? do many/any/some spiders lose, but live to fight another day?

in this article, a video might be awesome.Sennen goroshi 13:23, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

It usually depends upon what the spider owners agree upon; the little boys seem to like to see one of the combatants eventually wrapping its opponent in silk (ends up as lunch). The hard-core bettors seem to agree upon the "fall-from-the-stick-three-times-and-loses" approach; the losing spider does keep life and limb, but usually only for a time. Injuries such as bites to the legs or worse, to the body weakens the injured spider. They usually don't last for more than a day after being injured. I'll see what I can do about a video. -- • Kurt Guirnela • ‡ ^Talk 05:05, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

a warning - personally I see nothing wrong with spider fighting, i must admit i consider dog fighting/cock fighting/most blood sports to be cruel and barbaric - but i couldn't care less about spiders - however beware of editors with major issues against blood sports complaining about this. I hope no one has a problem with this, as even though Im a total animal lover, I think the concept of spider fighting sounds pretty interesting. I used to keep a preying mantis, and it was great to watch that hunt - do people in the Philippines ever use anything other than spiders? the idea of a Mantis fight, sounds interesting.Sennen goroshi 14:29, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, if anyone complains, we always resolve issues with Consensus. Anyway, the content in the article is purely encyclopedic. Cockfights are big in the Philippines, top breeders raise all sorts of bloodlines here. When I was a kid we used to have rhinoceros or june beetle fights, but I don't consider that a blood sport; the bugs never injure each other, they simply lose if they fall over on their backs and can't roll over again. -- • Kurt Guirnela • ‡ ^Talk 23:39, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

probable species

it seems that these guys are members of the genus Araneus--Lenticel ^(talk) 06:43, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Controversy

Spiders that have been kept for the purpose of fighting have difficulty being rehabilitated back into the wild due to the emotional damage that has been caused to them.

Is it just me or is this line ridiculous? Rehabilitating spiders, and spiders having emotional issues? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.25.184.131 (talk) 05:15, 6 August 2010 (UTC)

It looks like a spoof introduced by some rascal. It is ridiculous. P0M (talk) 21:22, 22 October 2010 (UTC)

Don't dismiss this suggestion completely, spiders are known do have very fragile emotions. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.225.184.205 (talk) 15:13, 29 October 2010 (UTC)

Come on, spiders are people, too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ivegotbellyfur (talk • contribs) 21:18, 13 November 2010 (UTC)

Names and terminology

Ah... childhood memories. Haha

There is a very strict method of actually choosing the spiders. The spiders need to match a certain likeness. They probably come from different species, but yeah, all of them are Araneus, and all MUST be orb weaving (i.e. they must build a "web").

The one exception that I know of are the large spiders we call Trabunko (from Spanish Carbunco, 'Carbuncle', from its shape), which was, I think, Nephilidae. The weird thing is that any spiders which do not match the criteria are simply called 'spider' (with poisonous connotations and are thus avoided, even if relatively harmless). Suitable spiders are called damang/kaka (In Visayan). Note: these words are NEVER used to refer to other types of spiders (in contrast to tagalog, which uses one word - gagamba - for both spiders they use in spiderfights with, and for other spiders).

We also had nicknames for the kind of spiders, each with different reputations of ferocity. A childhood favorite was one we called taga-mais ('corn dweller'), with bluish legs and a striped light brown opisthosoma. Names I can remember so far: taga-balay (house dweller, spiders which build orbs inside houses, reputed for refusing to fight and thus often used cruelly as practice enemies, heh), number zero/number one/number eight(named because of patterns on their abdomens resembling hindu-arabic numerals, or for the number of dots), pulahan ('red one', bright red/pink spiders), and a whole slew of "taga's" - tagatubo (sugarcane dweller), taga-sagbot (grass dweller), taga-kuryente (power line dweller, LOL), taga-mangga (mango tree dweller), taga-cacao (cacao tree dweller), tagadoldol (kapok tree dweller), taga-(INSERT NAME OF TREE/SHRUB/GRASS/STRUCTURE HERE), hehe.

Anyway, I'll see if I can improve the article itself.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 17:52, 17 December 2010 (UTC)

Need Info on other forms of Spider Fighting

Anyone knowledgeable with the Singaporean and Japanese forms? They need info as well on catching and fighting to improve the article and make its scope worldwide.

Proposed Layout:

• Lead
• Paaway Damang (Philippines)
• (Singaporean term for Spider Fighting) (Singapore)
• Kumo Gassen (Japan)
• Legal and Moral Issues
• See Also
• References

Please contribute. Even a rough idea is alright. I or some other editor can take care of cleaning it up.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 06:07, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

There is an autobiographical novel called Spider Boys written by a man who avidly participated in fighting using the males of a species of jumping spiders. If I remember correctly he reports young people catching male jumping spiders, keeping them in match boxes, letting two males fight until one was driven into submission (the males apparently don't bite each other), gambling over which one will win, etc. The author is savvy enough about spiders to know that the males copulatory organs are the pedipalps. If the article on bread making does not require contributions from physicists and food scientists to validly document how people have always made bread, it seems to me that a careful report from a spider fighter ought to be good evidence for how fights are conducted. P0M (talk) 14:42, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Chinese term used in Singapore is 鬥蜘蛛 dòu zhī zhū （fighting spiders) analogous to the term for gamecocks 鬥雞 (fighting chickens). Term from English is just "fighting spiders" I think. I'll have a look at the novel. The only on-line references to spider fighting in Singapore (in Chinese) seem to be about a DVD entitled Fighting Spiders -- and that movie may be a take-off on the novel.

I found one website that seems very good. http://fightingspider.blogspot.com/2009/08/where-to-catch-fighting-spiders.html

The information is not "scientific" except that they do have the name of some of the species of jumping spiders used -- and that agrees with the novel and not with assertions I have seen that only one species of jumping spider is used. P0M (talk) 15:25, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Following out links to the above, I actually found serious studies, and by people who are interested in something besides species identification. There is much good information on how the males actually fight. It's not a feeding issue, it's a "who gets to mate" issue I think. http://fightingspider.blogspot.com/2009/07/thiania-bhamoensis.html

The articles I have found generally agree on there being one genus of spiders identified as "fighting spiders," but other places talk about differences in coloration. Maybe in this genus (Thiania) there are differences in coloration among individuals. There are at least two species in this genus that are identified as "fighting spiders," so that fact may account for color differences. P0M (talk) 15:58, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

Hmm... I'll go read if I get the time. You can kickstart it if you want though. Divide the article into subsections containing the different forms of spider fighting. The Singaporean one will probably need the same info as given in the Filipino one - i.e. Catching and Care and Fighting. Wish we had pictures though, Thiania is pretty. :P And yes, in contrast, in Philippine Spider Fighting, they will eat each other because all the spiders used in the Filipino form are female (usually from different species even). The slimmer and non-web-building male spiders of Araneus are called "iro-iro" ('dog-like one') colloquially, and are often actually used as practice victims. The females are bloodthirsty enough that they normally also try to eat males after mating. -- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 21:01, 19 December 2010 (UTC)

O.K. I found that I had to rewrite the lead. I've found a picture of Thiania. I've started to reorganize the article into separate parts for Philippines, Japan, and Singapore. P0M (talk) 03:30, 20 December 2010 (UTC)

Great job so far :) I removed Globalize challenge from the article.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 12:44, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

Florida Prisons

I was incarcerated in the Florida for two years, and that was my first introduction to the sport of spider fighting. I personally trained and fought spiders (we used Regal Spiders) for gambling purposes. I was held at multiple different locations during this time, and the practice was fairly universal, with fights being generally for money, and to the losing spider's death. I do not know if this is something done in other states, but it may be worth mentioning that spider fighting is practiced to this day in the US. I cannot find any news source that could back up what I am saying, which makes sense, as all gambling and keeping of pets is prohibited by DOC rules, making prison spider fighting a secret society within a secret society of sorts; however, this article does show that inmates keep pet spiders: http://www.sptimes.com/2003/01/03/Floridian/You_don_t_mess_with_a.shtml —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.162.83.162 (talk) 23:06, 9 January 2011 (UTC)

I too did time in Florida DOC in the 90's and was very involved in spider fighting. However, we refered to them as "Florida Trantulas" and we never fought them on sticks, nor did I ever see them fought on sticks. We gambled on them. fights to the death. Usually in a styrofoam cup or for a big fight an outside dug out sand pit. anyone remember any of this or beg to differ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.82.176.216 (talk) 05:49, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I'll try to add it per the linked article.-- OBSIDIAN†SOUL 07:20, 6 September 2012 (UTC)