Welcome. My name is Andrew Smith and I am the senior director and writer at love tarantulas.com
which many of you will know is the only natural history film company in existence
dedicated to one thing - the making of intelligent feature-length tarantula documentaries on location
that explore both the biology and the history of the species in your collections
so let me cut to the quick lovetarantulas.com seeks crowdfunding for two new future length
Poecilotheria tarantula documentaries and they are: number one In Search of Poecilotheria
metallica and the story of the Victorian tarantula collector H.R.P. Carter number two
Poecilotheria hanumavilasumica a spider on the edge of extinction.
Two new tarantula documentaries and as you are aware we have a long track record in this field
our first documentary Desert Tarantulas was made for television over 35 years ago
when we were known as Fitzgerald publishing now rebooted as lovetarantulas.com
we have made six feature-length tarantula documentaries over the last five years including
Lasiodora 1640 which we filmed in the dry forests along the Atlantic coast of Brazil and features
the region's big bird-eating spiders plus a host of arboreal species
that we found along the way. Next Brachypelma two documentaries about Mexico's beautiful
red-leg tarantula spiders a genus which happens to include a number of the most iconic spiders
in the world and as an aside filming those spiders was particularly hairy in more sense than one
as we were filming along the Sierra Madre mountains along the pacific coast of Mexico
a region controlled by a number of Mexico's most notorious and violent drug cartels
and then in 2021 we asked you to crowdfund our last film project which we shot in Zimbabwe
and Tanzania Pelinobius muticus Africa's king baboon spider and the man-eating lions of Tsavo a
rip roaring tale of Victorian tarantula collectors man-eating lions and the construction of a railway
known by its builders as the lunatic line and now we are back with our latest film project
and the one that many of you have been waiting patiently for for many years
Poecilotheria India's tiger spiders once again we've been on location
and we have footage that you will drool over in the can we have the very first location footage
ever filmed of both metallica and formosa all of which have been bound up in the story of the
great Victorian tarantula collector HRP Carter and then in the second documentary we go south
to a location that 25 years ago myself and Paul Carpenter discovered a brand new Poecilotheria
spider Poecilotheria hanumavilasumica and we will tell you the tragic story
of what he's likely to be the first Poecilotheria spider to become extinct
but to do that we need to raise the money to finish off this project because what we do
is expensive so far we've spent about 5000 pounds on this film project
flights to India car hire accommodation and filming in India on location for one month
we now need another 3500 pounds to finish off all of the linking footage some additional filming
in Ireland that we need to undertake editing and the cost of the glass plates for the DVD
so we need your help and if you cherish what lovetarantulas is all about then think
of becoming either a patron or even a producer and supporting us with whatever you can afford
only love tarantulas does what we do and we can only do it with your support thank you