White porch spider
Cryptachaea gigantipes
The white porch spider is a small, amber to creamy white spider with dark spots. It likes sheltered spots, such as under the eaves and porches of houses. It is a cobweb spider, so it builds a tangled web.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
Eastern Australia, Norfolk Island and New Zealand, in rocky places, caves and on porches
Length
6.1 mm (0.24 in)
What does it eat?
It catches small insects in its tangled cobweb.
How big is it?
How long is it?
💅small enough to sit on your fingernail🍽️could run across a dinner table in 3.8 seconds⚡moves 43 times its own body length every second
How big is White porch spider compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
White porch spider about 0.94 km/h (0.58 mph)
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
In the wild it lives in rocky places and caves. Porches and eaves are like caves to it.
2
It was first noticed in New Zealand in 2000, but it may have arrived in the 1980s.
3
It was first described in 1890 in a German book about Australian spiders.
you asked
Most asked questions about White porch spider
?Where does the white porch spider live?
In eastern Australia, Norfolk Island and New Zealand, often under eaves and on porches.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Cryptachaea gigantipes
- Named by
- Keyserling, 1890
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Theridiidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Theridiidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Cryptachaea gigantipes (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Tom. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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