Empty Eyes

One of my current longings is for better equipment and the skill to take really great pictures of insects and arachnids. Despite my lack of equipment and skill, I managed to take a picture of an exoskeleton from my newly molted Heteropoda boiei spider using my crappy old camera pressed against the eyepiece of my very small, inexpensive (but surprisingly nice) dissecting microscope. The result was quite decent.  I love the empty eyes left behind when arachnids molt.

Edit:  The next molt I got some more pictures like this, even better ones.

The tailess whip scorpion - Damon diadema, just after molting

I got some decent shots of my tailless whip scorpion, Damon diadema, just after it molted this last time.  They are so incredibly different looking just after a molt.  I like these shots because you can see the old exoskeleton, and get a sense of how the whole process works.  I haven't been lucky enough to catch mine at the beginning of a molt.  There is also an amazing video of one of these guys that shows the entire molt, I highly recommend it, complete with super awesome, weird music.  You can find it here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uzuYRY2faQ

I have always wondered, do insects and arachnids that molt have any control over when it happens, or does it simply happen when it happens?  My tarantulas will build complex hammocks to lay in when they molt, so clearly they know it's coming, but can they decide, hey today seems safe, let's do it?  Of course I don't really believe they have a thought process like this, but I still wonder if they have any control at all over when the process begins.

Here are my shots of Critter:

Featured tarantula - Hapalopus sp. Columbia

This beautiful girl pictured below is my Hapalopus sp. Columbia, large morph. She is a captive bred tarantula, like all my arachnids, and comes from Tarantula Canada (tarantulacanada.com).  I got her as a 1/4 inch spiderling in April of 2016, so she has done very well, she is probably about an inch in leg span now, and has molted three times since April, and she is likely due for another one soon.  I keep her just at room temperature, which in my room tends to be between 22 Celsius and 24 daytime and 20 or so at night (I don't provide extra heat for any of my tarantulas and they seem to do fine). She likes to web her container fairly extensively, mostly sheets on the ground as you can see in the picture, and doesn't seem interested in burrowing at all, though others have reported a lot of burrowing by this species. I keep a water dish in the form of a coke bottle lid in one corner and over fill it whenever it gets low. I keep her currently in a size small critter keeper. I know people tend to keep spiderlings in vials (pillbottles), but I find my tarantulas do just fine in larger spaces.  When it's time to feed them, if they are having trouble chasing down their prey, I use a small paint brush to usher the prey towards them to make it easier for them to catch.  I don't like the idea of my arachnids having really small habitats, and I find this is a good compromise.