Lately many people have shared some wonderful images of tarantulas. Not to be out done, and to keep myself out of trouble, I took an exuvium from a 3" G. pulchripes and took a few pictures.

Everybody loves "eyes":



Here is a little higher magnification. Notice how the eyes rise up out of the surrounding exoskeleton:





Another favored image is that of the "feet" or tarsal pads:



Upon closer inspection, I noticed that not only were the setea numerous,but also covered in fine "hairs", it is no wonder these things are able to walk on water!:





How about a fang and cheliceral teeth?



And finally, this is a shot of the inside surface of one of the leg segments. Notice the pores which would connect to sensory setae? I've seen the membranous filaments before, but can not nail down what they are, possibly the remains from the musculature?



In any case, macrophotography is the way to go, over SEM, unless you want to look at setae and pores... these critters are just too big!

correct the fibers inside are whats left over from musculature

Having access to an SEM is a bit unfair, don't you think? Seriously, though, love the shots, especially the setae.

I know it's not quite fair, but hey, when you've got the toys...


It took me roughly an hour to go from exuvium to those few shots. Basically to get any decent resolution, you must coat the samples with various conductive metals. The very bright white ends of the setae is actually electron build up, it's called "charging". To get higher magnifications, I would need to critical point dry the samples with liquid carbon dioxide, and coat for longer. Next time maybe.

Christian

It would definitely be interesting to see them in even higher resolution.

You know what I'd want to see? A Ceratogyrus species' horn in a micrograph. I've always wondered what the structure of that looks like in comparison to the rest of the exoskeleton.

Get me an exuvium and I'll do it! As far as I'm concerned, I'll shoot anything I can.

Interesting shots Christian but only monochrome?

Seriously though maybe when I get the photo galleries caught up we can have a section for close up macro shots (like Anubis's claw shots) and SEM's etc.

As I said, I have access to the tools and to sputter coat and shoot eye turrets is easy as pie. I am working up another leg for better setae images.

As for color, all colorized SEM's are done in two ways, post acquisition psuedocoloration, or there are systems which psuedocolor while the SEM is acquring the image. The latter is quite expensive, but they are impressive.

I might try CS3 to give it a go...

Christian

ImageJ, loaded LUT (look up table), edited the brightness and contrast.

Man, I love SEM photos. Very cool, Christian! It would be great to see Ollie's suggestion used in conjunction with hard to ID genera.

Really cool pictures!!!