i would assume they couldn't because like you cant put things on paths and what not. i feel like my town is a tarantula free zone and i have very few paths to start with. i can never find them.
I've been wondering this same thing, since my town has quite a few paths too, and I never see any tarantulas, but I can never tell if it's because of the paths or because they're just so rare and I have terrible luck with finding them. o_o
I have almost every space with paths and I've seen many tarantulas spawn on paths. It'd be weird if you couldn't find a tarantula at all just because you have lots of paths.
I don't see why not, other bugs crawl on my paths all the time. I haven't seen any tarantulas yet. I caught some last year, but I've yet to see any yet and it's not like I don't play at night.
I hope they can, because I don't have a lot of paths so it'd be really bad luck if the reason why I haven't seen one yet was just because of the small paths I have.