Michael Andreas Jacobi

Michael Andreas Jacobi (1964-) was born and raised in the Chicago area, lived in Nashville and Seattle and now lives in Huntley, Illinois. A professional herpetoculturist/arachnoculturist and author, his experience keeping and breeding reptiles and arachnids is wide-ranging. Over the course of three decades he has specialized at one time or another in pythons, arboreal vipers, geckos and tarantulas, and has also worked extensively with chameleons and frogs. Owner/operator of a number of reptile/tarantula/exotic pet ventures and 30 year veteran of the pet industry, Michael now operates his online store at SpiderShoppe.com while working on other related projects.

Michael is the proprietor of SpiderShoppe.com, creator of Arachnoculture magazine, the Tarantulas in the Terrarium instructional film and the online resource The Tarantula Bibliography. He is a member of the British Tarantula Society committee (North American Representative) 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. He has studied tarantulas in nature in Costa Rica and Suriname with renowned arachnohistorian Andrew M. Smith, and also has photographed and collected them throughout the southwestern US and Mexico. In 2014 his destination is Sri Lanka.

Michael's passions outside of the world's of exotic fauna and terrarium pets are photography, travel, poker, guitar and the shooting sports.

Visit Michael online at ExoticFauna.com and SpiderShoppe.com.