This story contains big, hairy spiders. And they don’t like to be told what to do.

The Chilean Rose Hair Tarantula is one nasty looking arachnid.

Classified as a “moderately large” tarantula, it has legs like crooked pipe cleaners, a bulbous abdomen, and a fused thorax and head; covering the whole thing is a coat of reddish fuzz. But what really sends chills up the spine is when the creature decides to go for a stroll. Its eight legs move as if it was being choreographed by Wes Craven, each appendage moving independently from the others, with those on opposite sides of its body alternating steps.

“That unusual creepy walk that freaks so many people out?” says biology professor and neuroscience program director Tom Root to the students in his Animal Behavior course. “That combination of movement is called the gait. That’s what we’ll be studying.” Specifically, the class will be studying the neurobiology of locomotion in an attempt to understand neural decision-making in the tarantulas. Root outlines the basic neural circuitry—brain, nerve cord, interoceptors, exteroceptors—involved in the instantaneous decisions the spider must make as it moves. “The task for a tarantula’s brain,” he explains, “is to keep its eight legs moving, not in a random way, but in a very specific way.” The students’ task, then, will be to record a spider’s specific gait, indicating which legs move when, first in a controlled situation and then in an experiment that will spatially challenge the creature. Of course, to do so, the students will have to handle the tarantulas, which, not surprisingly, has some folks spooked.

So as 25 men and women look on—with expressions ranging from disgust to fascination—Root begins to explain that there are direct and indirect methods of handling the spiders. Indirectly, one can use a flat substance (cardboard, slate) to scoop a specimen from its terrarium into a Tupperware-like, circular holding chamber.  From there, the chamber can be tilted onto its side, and the spider can be coaxed to move along into a “walking chamber,” a clear plastic rectangular structure about the size of a shoebox. Once in the walking chamber, the spider can again be coaxed to walk the length of the box; there’s not a top on the box, and a pencil or thin watercolor paintbrush can be used to prod the spider. (It usually takes just one poke, Root says.) It’s during this stroll that the students videotape the tarantula’s gait; later, they’ll review the tape to observe and record the order in which the legs moved.

Now, Root says, there is also a direct method of handling a tarantula. All you have to do is allow it “to walk onto your hand.” But, he adds, “you don’t want to grab it. Leave the choice up to him.” As the students scatter in pairs to their respective workstations in the lab, a few brave souls are willing to go the direct route.

“Oh man, this is so cool; it’s barely touching me,” says one woman. Next to her, looking a little less confident, a guy is allowing one of the tarantulas to creep onto his hand. And right then, his lab partner bounces over and announces, “Root says that yes, they are poisonous, but no, they won’t kill you. But if you get bitten it will hurt like hell.”

“Oh my god. Will someone please take this spider back?”

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