Blue-footed baboon spider targeted by exotic pet trade despite low public profile

When people think about South Africa’s illegal wildlife trade, they usually picture rhinos, elephants or pangolins. Few would imagine that a small spider, hidden for most of its life beneath a trapdoor burrow, could also find itself in the crosshairs of collectors. Yet the blue-footed baboon spider, a little-known species found only in South Africa, is increasingly appearing in the international exotic pet trade. Rarely seen and confined to a limited range, the spider’s striking blue legs and unusual burrow-building behaviour have made it desirable to collectors. For Sibongakonke Ngogodo, the wildlife in trade legal officer at the Endangered Wildlife Trust (EWT), its predicament highlights a broader conservation challenge: many vulnerable species receive little attention because they are small, obscure and poorly understood. Baboon spiders are ground-dwelling African tarantulas. Ngogodo notes that South Africa has a rich diversity of the spiders — the South African National Biodiversity Institute (Sanbi) recorded eight genera and 44 species, many of them endemic. The blue-footed baboon spider can be recognised by the sky-blue colour on the upper surface of the final segments of its legs. Unlike many animals that move widely through the landscape, baboon spiders are generally sedentary. They spend most of their lives in silk-lined burrows and rarely venture far from them. The behaviour makes them difficult to detect but it also leaves populations vulnerable when collectors target known sites, Ngogodo writes in the latest edition of the EWT’s Conservation Matters magazine. Wildlife trafficking is often discussed through the lens of charismatic animals with tusks, horns, scales or feathers. But smaller species such as spiders, scorpions, reptiles, amphibians and insects can also be targeted because they are rare, unusual or difficult to obtain, she says. The growing demand for exotic pets has created a market for species that many people would never associa