BOOK REVIEW: “Tarantulas: Breeding Experience & Wildlife”

This is such a great time to be a tarantula enthusiast. New exciting species are popping up all of the time and thanks to the internet, it is so easy to meet and talk to people with similar interests and experiences. Though there are many tarantula books out there, only a handful can really be described as exceptional. The subject of today’s review is one such book.

“Tarantulas: Breeding Experience & Wildlife” is a German book that came out in 2015 and thankfully an English translation version is available. The book is authored by three French tarantula authorities, Fred Cleton, Yannick Sigwalt and Jean-Michel Verdez and their experiences of observing tarantulas species in the wild is the meat of the book. This information, combined with their personal experiences of keeping tarantulas as pets, is what makes this book so wonderful.

You do not have to be a scientist to read this book as it is geared towards the enthusiast. It is a very easy read and one you will want to do cover-to-cover. It clocks in at 232 pages and has 300 full color pictures. Eighty one species of tarantula are covered and each entry features important details such as where they are from, size, housing requirements, temperature and humidity requirements, disposition and behavior, breeding and any other important details that may be necessary in keeping each species successfully. The color photographs are spectacular and are among the best I have ever seen in a book of this type.

Other chapters include The World of Tarantulas, Keeping Tarantulas, Husbandry, Diseases and Treatments, Strikes, Venom and Urticating Bristles, Relatedness/Inbreeding and Introduction and Cohabitation. Each of these chapters then have multiple sub-chapters.

At the time of this writing this book was available on Amazon for about $65 which is nice as oftentimes these books from outside of the United States are hard to come by and must be ordered from international sellers. Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of this book today! You will be glad you did!

If you would like to purchase a copy, please click on the image below.

~David Albaugh