EXOTIC PETS SERIES May 2012 ALL ABOUT AMERICA’S FAVORITE EIGHT-LEGGED PETS $4.00 US/$5.99 CAN Basic Tarantula Care Inner View— Rick C. West Tarantula Importing and Arachnid Commerce INNER VIEW: RICK C. WEST Michael Jacobi: Thanks for agreeing to do this, Rick. I know many arachnid hobbyists, particularly those interested in theraphosid spiders, are very interested in learning more about you and your work. You are considered to be one of the worldÍs leading authorities on tarantulas and you have been involved in film productions, scientific consultation for researchers and wildlife law enforcement, educational lectures, field work and ecotravel. You have authored many papers and articles about theraphosid spiders and are an photography, forging new friendships, Contents accomplished photographer. In addition, conservation and enforcement issues, the you are also an arachnoculturist; notoriety, and much more. keeping and breeding tarantulas in INNER VIEW: RICK C. WEST 3 captivity for many years. Is there one MJ: Your field work has taken you all specific endeavor that you have found over the world. I am sure many readers dream of going to just one of the places Basic Tarantula Care 8 particularly satisfying? you have been fortunate enough to visit. Rick C. West: Thank you for inviting If one of them could choose just one trip Tarantula Importing and me. Your question is not an easy one to Arachnid Commerce 16 for observing and collecting tarantulas in answer but I will try by saying there is his or her lifetime, what would be your no single endeavor about my work that I recommended destination? in the find particularly satisfying. In reality, all Spotlight 21 aspects surrounding my association with RCW: French Guiana. This small country, tarantulas over the past forty years have a department of France bordering Brazil, Captive Care and Breeding of blended into one enormously satisfying is relatively safe and is easy to drive and Holothele incei 22 and giant interwoven endeavor; the get around in. In my opinion, French tarantulas, travel to exotic places, the Guiana is one of the least populated little Dirt is Dirt history and geography of the countries, countries still with a large percentage except when it’s Mud 24 the natural history of the fauna and of primary rainforest and diversity of flora encountered, the cultures, the interesting fauna, flora and tarantulas. 2 continued on 4 3 continued from 3 MJ: Will you be working with who took me through the ‘ayahuasca experience in the field came in April 2004, GreenTracks or another company on any [a powerful hallucinogenic drink] when my best friend, Nick Gordon, and ecotours in the near future? healing ceremony’ and told me tarantula I were just starting on a new tarantula documentary. Nick suddenly collapsed RCW: I’m presently working out the myths was also a rare and interesting and died in my arms of an apparent ground logistics and pricing with individual. I’ve come in contact with massive heart attack; he was two years GreenTracks for future trips to French many other indigenous cultures over younger than me! CPR attempts to revive Guiana; we will see if trips ever tarantula spiders but the previous two him failed. When a colleague dies in materialize as there are so many things encounters, next to the Piaroa Indians of the field, you don’t abandon him. With to consider and work out on the business southern Venezuela that most readers are emotions on the back burner, I spent the side of ecotourism. more familiar with, are two encounters that stand above all the others. better part of a week taking care of his body and making sure that both he and MJ: You also have traveled to some areas his belongings got home safely to his where there is civil unrest and more than grieving family and friends. It will be a a slight element of danger. Will you share long while before I get over that ordeal. with us a story about travel in a hostile environment? MJ: What was the first wild tarantula you collected and do you still remember the immediately scooped it up in the bucket RCW: British Wildlife cameraman, Nick experience? then proceeded to bug the heck out of Gordon, and I were confined by warring my parents to let me keep it and take it Yanomami Indians in southern Venezuela RCW: As a small child, I always dragged home; they did. The more I looked for in 1992. After some negotiation, we home creepy crawly creatures with an reliable information on how to care for were released. In 1996, our film crew innate curiosity for them. When I was tarantulas, the less I found, so, I began to and I were in the middle of an Indian thirteen years old, I went to visit my keep my own notes (found out years later blockade and an advancing army sent to relatives in Poway, San Diego County, it was Aphonopelma eutylenum). I’m not break them up in a remote Ecuadorian USA. My cousin told me they had ashamed to admit, here and now, that for MJ: Your travels have also exposed you mountain pass; luckily, no shots were ‘tarantulas’ living in their orange orchard. the first few months of handling it, I wore to many cultures and peoples. Your fired and we were eventually allowed to “Tarantulas”!!! no way, I thought. Those a heavy leather glove. That’s the truth. interactions with the Piaroa Indians of pass. On occasion, I’ve encountered local couldn’t be the very same giant hairy spiders I’d only seen in horror films? Venezuela have been documented. Is ‘hunters’ in the forest; some of which MJ: Where is the oddest place you have Armed with a bucket and trowel, off we there another native people that you have make the hairs on your neck stand up ever found a tarantula in the wild? found especially interesting or friendly? when your gut instinct tells you they’re went on the ‘big tarantula hunt’. A two inch silk-lipped burrow was pointed RCW: I found a small Ephebopus RCW: Again, not an easy single-answer sizing you up for robbery, or worse. out to me. I admit that my first thought murinus, in the French Guiana city of question. The Mambila ‘Spider Sorcerer’ I’m not ashamed to admit that I always was, “That’s all?”, I had expected a huge Cayenne, living in the spout of an old who demonstrated spider divination to carry a weapon in the field and, on hole. While digging, the dirt caved in gas can. Another time, I found a female me in Cameroon, and correctly predicted some occasions, my guide has carried a and I thought I’d lost the burrow so I Pterinochilus chordatus right at the edge my unborn grandchild’s gender, was firearm. You have to be constantly aware gave up. All of a sudden (to me) the of a plane runway at the Masai Mara very pleasant and extremely interesting. of your surroundings and of the things ‘earth shook’ and out popped my first Game Reserve, Kenya. As my plane The Ese Eje shaman in southern Peru that can harm you in the field. My worst tarantula, it was an electrifying thrill. I landed and taxied in, I refused to move 4 continued on 6 5 continued from 5 while I was digging it up, the plane’s natural habitat, but others were taken of or portions of the body are not all subtrate used for tarantulas. I will say, wing went right over my head while the captive tarantulas using dioramas. What in the picture, the angle is bad, and for one last time, that tarantulas do not engine drowned out the frantic shouting special challenges do each present to the some images are made on hands or live in a sterile environment. I have used of my wife and travel companions. photographer? on unnatural or garishly contrasting regular soil from the garden for forty backgrounds. I’m not trying to years and have no more mortalities than MJ: Are there any genera or species of RCW: When photographing tarantulas discourage anyone from making arachnid anyone else tarantulas that you have yet to observe in the field, you have little to no control images as I know what I’m talking about who go to in the wild that you are particularly of your subject or it’s setting and here — all my earlier arachnid images huge lengths interested in seeking? limited time to make your images. In were as bad as or worse than what I just to make their addition to lunging a lot of expensive RCW: Yes, but I won’t say what or where mentioned. tarantula’s camera equipment around, you have it is as it would divulge an extremely rare terrarium to contend with the risk of theft or MJ: I remember a couple dozen years species and we all know there are people as sterile as damage and annoying factors like heat, ago when tarantula keeping was not as out there that will destroy sensitive possible — I humidity, dust, water, mold, biting widespread or popular and the people I tarantula populations and habitats won’t even get bugs and leeches, venomous snakes, learned from directly or indirectly were (legally or illegally) just for the almighty on the subject curious or suspicious people, etc. When people like yourself, Ralph Henning, dollar. What squeezes my nards is these of humid photographing tarantulas in dioramas, Al McKee and Stanley Schultz. When people use the age old argument that it’s versus dry — or ‘basement setups’, although you have you first started keeping tarantulas in for ‘the betterment of the species’ to have this interview would be long enough! more control and time over a wider range captivity were there other pioneers that them survive in captivity.