Exotic Fauna
Exotic Fauna is the web home of Michael Andreas Jacobi, the creator of ARACHNOCULTURE E-ZINE, The Tarantula Bibliography and The World Of Atheris educational websites, an author and educator with vast arachnid and reptile experience, and a web designer specializing in exotic animal sites.
Michael Andreas Jacobi
Michael Andreas Jacobi operates Exotic Fauna Enterprises while also handling the sales and website for TARANTULAS.com and acting as general manager of Northwest Zoological Supply, a pet industry breeder and distributor of feeder rodents and insects, small companion mammals and veiled chameleons. His experience keeping and breeding reptiles and arachnids is wide-ranging. Over the course of 35 years he has specialized at one time or another in pythons, arboreal vipers, geckos and tarantulas, and has also worked extensively with chameleons and frogs. He has bred about one hundred species of snakes, lizards (especially geckos) and dart frogs, as well as several dozen species of tarantula. He currently focuses his efforts on Madagascan geckos and knob-tailed geckos.
Michael is an exotic animal breeder, author, publisher, lecturer and web designer. His new book Tarantulas is published by TFH as part of the Animal Planet Pet Care Library. It was released in September 2011. His upcoming book Geckos (A complete guide to Gekkota), part of the Complete Herp Care series by TFH, will be released next year.
Through Exotic Fauna Enterprises, he published ARACHNOCULTURE, an international print journal for keepers of tarantulas and scorpions that has now been replaced by an online e-zine version. In 2006 he filmed the TARANTULAS IN THE TERRARIUM instructional DVD, which is now available as a QuickTime movie for computer with excerpts appearing on YouTube. His work with arboreal vipers includes the WORLD OF ATHERIS website. He also has a strong interest in field research and accompanied renowned tarantula authority and British Tarantula Society Chairman Andrew M. Smith on a 2006 expedition to Costa Rica where they found and studied 14 species of theraphosid spider.
Michael is a member of the British Tarantula Society committee and was the keynote speaker at the BTS Lectures in February 2007. He has also lectured at reptile events and the annual conferences of The American Tarantula Society and ArachnoCon, a 2006 and 2007 convention he also helped organize.
Michael was a professional animal dealer and breeder for over 20 years before closing Michael Jacobi's Spider Shoppe and Jacobi Herpetoculture in the summer of 2006 to focus on publishing, education and travel. However, in the summer of 2007 he returned to animal breeding and sales when he relocated from Nashville to accept a position with Seattle-based Northwest Zoological Supply, the parent company of TARANTULAS.COM. He left to return to his native midwest for a little over a year and a half while continuing to run the companies' Internet operations, and then returned to the Seattle area and Northwest Zoological Supply in February 2010 to take the position of General Manager overseeing all animal breeding and company operations, and to continue his work with TARANTULAS.com in person at the breeding facility.
Michael was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1964 and grew up and spent much of his adult life in suburban Chicago. In 2000, he moved to eastern Washington for fourteen months before spending six years in Nashville, Tennessee. He returned to Washington with a move to the Seattle area during August 2007. The cross-country moves didn't stop there. In May 2008 he returned to Chicagoland for a couple of months before moving again, this time to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, before returning to Edmonds, 20 miles north of Seattle, in February 2010. Michael is divorced and has no children. He currently is retired from tarantula keeping and breeding, but continues his herpetocultural efforts with a small collection comprised mostly of geckos. When he's not outdoors looking for critters and photographing nature or indoors staring at a computer screen, his hobbies include disc (Frisbee™) golf, acoustic guitar, reading, writing, online poker and spending time with his dog Taylor and parrot Jesse.
