The carapace is covered with fine hair; its apparent color depends on the illumination, varying from sandy grey through to rose or yellow.

He did not give a full description, merely saying in a footnote that the name was for the females from Guerrero that Pickard-Cambridge had doubtfully assigned to the same species as the males.

[8] Alexander Petrunkevitch in 1939 and Carl Roewer in 1942 restored Pickard-Cambridge's original name, treating albiceps in this context as a junior synonym of pallidum.

After studying the original specimens (which neither Petrunkevitch nor Roewer had done), Andrew Smith in 1995 reinstated Pocock's distinction, recognizing the females as a separate species, which, however, he placed in the genus Aphonopelma rather than Brachypelma.

[10] In 2005, Arturo Locht et al. restored Smith's Aphonopelma albiceps to its current genus Brachypelma and also synonymized Schmidt's Brachypelmides ruhnaui.

In the wild, they build long burrows, typically under large rocks, but may inhabit nests abandoned by rodents or other animals.