Giant Tarantulas. One of the larger species of tarantulas is the Grammostola mollicoma, whose common name is the Brazilian giant tawny red. A tarantula has two body parts. The anterior part of the body is covered above by a shell, or carapace. F. Costa and F. Perez–Miles discussed the carapace length of the adult male G. mollicoma in the article “Reproductive Biology of Uruguayan Theraphosids” (The Journal of Arachnology, Vol. 30, No. 3, pp. 571–

587). The carapace lengths of a random sample of 50 adult male G. mollicoma have a mean of 18.14 mm and a standard deviation of 1.76 mm.