INNER VIEW: ANDREW M. SMITH
Page 2 of 4 | 2005 Interview by Michael Jacobi
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MJ: Your books and tarantula lectures contain a wealth of historical information including descriptions of colorful characters that were the early amateur arachnologists and trader-collectors. Can you comment on a couple of personalities that you have found particularly fascinating?
AMS: For me the study of arachnology is not just the challenge of identification, as is so often the case with taxonomy, or even the challenge of keeping and breeding a new species of tarantula, but also the history of the subject. I want to understand the men who were the pioneers of the early days of spider research and strive to gain some insight into what motivated them. I started my teaching career as a history teacher having read social economic history at university. I taught history for ten years before retraining as a science teacher. As a teenager I studied both biology and history at A level and come university was torn between the choices of my two consuming passions. Thirty years later, I am still torn. The teaching of science may be my wife and breadwinner, but there is always the exotic allure and heady scent of my mistress — history.
But which of my historical arachnologists am I to choose and discuss? Those of you who have a cigar box stashed with a host of cherished Cuban cigars will understand my predicament which one to choose? decisions, decisions! Reginald Innes Pocock would have to be my main man because I spent months tracking the details of his life down and in doing so touched briefly upon the raw energy of the man and the previously unknown tragedy that was to later guide his actions. As with all research, one is influenced by luck and I was very lucky to make contact with the daughter of Pocock's son's mistress who gave me a biscuit tin of old photographs. There was also the poignant moment when I opened up a small time capsule left by Pocock's son Constantine, which I found in the archive of the Royal College of Surgeons where he had worked for forty years. I had gone along to the archive on a hunch where upon I discovered that Constantine, in April 1955, had deposited a small box and a file of letters. April 1955 is the month and year of my birth and at that moment I experienced a rather spooky sense of dejá v. The box contained two glass photographic plates of Natalie, the much-loved daughter that Pocock lost in 1901, and whose loss seemed to have acted as a catalyst in his professional life. I would have to admit that I had never expected to locate such haunting images of Pocock's child. My more recent find has been the Rev. Montague-Burrows who collected the type specimen of P. ornata for Pocock. I had given him up for lost and then I found his old church still standing in Ratnapura in Sri Lanka and his obituary and photograph in the archives of the church newsletter in the Lambeth archive.
MJ: Your Tarantula ID Guide came out in 1986 and gave enthusiasts an extraordinary overview of tarantula diversity. How did this project come about? Did you have the sense during its creation that there would be hobbyists such as myself that would spend hours upon hours paging through it?
AMS: The Tarantula ID Guide [Smith, A.M. 1986. The Tarantula: Classification and Identification Guide, Fitzgerald, London] was my first nonfiction book and thus is, like ones first girl, remembered with much affection. But in reality it is now very dated and after twenty years is deeply flawed. Nevertheless, there is still a popular misconception that the ID Guide was based upon a classification scheme that I drew up. It was not. It was based on the classification schemes of Carl Roewer and Alexander Petrunkevitch, which with Robert Raven's later revisions were cobbled together into an odd sod vehicle. My role was to track down the scientific papers listed in these schemes and summarise them. It was a huge task and played an important part of a learning and familiarisation process that involved examining the greater body of theraphosid literature. This was to prove crucial in the production of the next generation of books. The ID Guide proved incredibly popular, being reprinted five times over a period of five years but it was deeply flawed. At the time I was probably the only person other than Raven to have studied the greater body of theraphosid literature and I knew that 90% of it was of historical value, yet of limited scientific value. The reality is that it is not possible to accurately identify the majority of theraphosid spiders from this historical body of literature. One would need to go back to the types and in 1988 I sat down to write "Baboon Spiders".
MJ: You have also published two guides focusing on the tarantulas of the US and Mexico and those of Africa. However, the book that our readers will want to know about most is currently in production. What can you tell us about the Poecilotheria book that you are co-writing with Peter Kirk?
AMS: "Baboon Spiders" and "Tarantulas of the USA & Mexico" are far more important books than the "Tarantula ID Guide" in that for the first time they gave the hobbyist access to drawings of the type material. These books were a challenge to write and done again I would make the physical descriptions more technical — but I was seduced into trying to make them accessible to the hobbyist, which I hope they were. I am proud to note that I will act as the producer of Richard Gallon's version of "Baboon Spiders", which is being written at present, as is Rogerio Bertáni's "Bird Eating Spiders". These will continue the proud Fitzgerald tradition of being responsible for publishing the pioneering books that are associated with the hobby. The Poecilotheria book has become a labour of love and in truth I have spent far too much time on the research that has gone into it. We could have published two years ago but it would have been a very different book from what you are going to get. Eighty percent of this book has information that will seen for the first time in this book. It looks like it is going to be a 300-pager with over a 100 colour photographs, most of which have been taken in the field by myself or by my team. If not, they are by Frédéric Cléton, Europe's best spider photographer. In fact, my publisher has indicated that there is no more money for field trips and research and if it is not ready by the end of the year I will be staked out in the Sonoran desert with my gonads covered in honey. I am writing my butt off and I cannot go any faster. Michael, here is an ARACHNOCULTURE magazine exclusive the title of the new book is...
Reginald Pocock's Poecilotheria & the Tiger Spider Wallahs
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