I film tarantulas where they live and in my own collection, and I license that footage and give talks about it. The films on the channel go back to 2017, from Mexico and Chile to Malaysia and Panama, and I narrate them myself. Licensing terms depend on the use, so rates are on request.
What exists
The channel has 127 public films, about 19 hours in total. 107 are long films and 20 are Shorts. 55 of the films are in 4K or higher, together about 8 hours, and 11 of those are 8K files. The 4K films start in 2019, and the newest field films from Mexico are 8K.
Most of it is field footage: tarantulas in the wild, filmed where we found them. A smaller part, roughly one film in eight, is husbandry from my own collection, such as feeding, rehousing and enclosures. Both are useful, but they are different products, so tell me which one you need.
- Regions on camera: Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Peru and Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Brazil, Trinidad and the Dominican Republic, Thailand, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and Oman.
- Groups on camera: New World terrestrial and burrowing tarantulas (Brachypelma, Aphonopelma, Euathlus, Sericopelma, Xenesthis), arboreal species (Avicularia and relatives, Typhochlaena, Poecilotheria), Old World species (Omothymus, Chilobrachys, Ornithoctonus) and a Liphistius trapdoor spider.
- Behaviour: feeding, urticating hairs, mating, autotomy and the search itself.
The best way to see what a clip looks like is the channel itself. Every film is public on YouTube, with timestamps in the descriptions, so you can point me to the seconds you want. Stills from the same trips are in the tarantula gallery.
Who is behind the camera
Identification is part of what you get. I described Amazonius burgessi in 2018 (ZooKeys 784), and the same paper erects a new genus and describes two new Tapinauchenius. I am a co-author of Antikuna cimrmani (2021, Journal of Natural History). With Hiltebrand and Rast I wrote Die Avicularia Revision für Hobbyisten, the guide for keepers on the Avicularia splits. Hapalotremus martinorum is named for Martin Gamache and me, and I co-collected the types in Salta, Argentina, in 2011. I am not one of its authors.
That matters for licensing because a clip with a wrong species name is a problem for you later. For each clip I can give you the name, the country and the habitat, and I say so when an animal is not identified to species. A lot of what we film is not.
Talks
I have given the Panama field trip as a live lecture, public in full: Tarantula Fieldtrip Panama – Sericopelma sp. St. Catalina – LIVE LECTURE, about an hour on the trip and the search for Sericopelma sp. Santa Catalina.
For clubs, schools, museums and zoos I can talk about how we find tarantulas in the field, why new species keep turning up, how names change and what that means for keepers, and what is happening to wild populations. The talks are built on footage we filmed ourselves, so the pictures are not stock.
How to ask
Write to martin@birdspiders.ch, the contact address in the Impressum. For footage, send the film or timestamps you have seen, the species or region you need, where it will be used and for how long. For a talk, send the audience, the date and the place. I answer with a quote. Rates are on request, because the price of a ten second clip in a documentary is not the price of a slide in a club lecture.
If you only want to watch, the newsletter is a short tarantula news briefing with notes from the field.