Black tunnelweb spider
Porrhothele antipodiana
The black tunnelweb spider is a big, sturdy spider from New Zealand with an orange brown front and a purple black body. It builds long silk tunnels under logs and rocks. It waits inside for something to touch the threads at the entrance.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
New Zealand, under logs and rocks and sometimes near houses
What does it eat?
It catches insects and other small animals that walk across the silk at the door of its tunnel.
How fast is it?
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
Black tunnelweb spider about 1.2 km/h (0.75 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
Its tunnels can be 25 centimetres long, and it can spin one in just an hour.
2
A big female's body can be more than 3 centimetres long.
3
Grown-up males wander around looking for females and sometimes come into houses.
4
It was one of the very first spiders from New Zealand to get a scientific name.
you asked
Most asked questions about Black tunnelweb spider
?Where does the black tunnelweb spider live?
All over New Zealand, under logs, rocks and tree bark.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Porrhothele antipodiana
- Named by
- Walckenaer, 1837
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Porrhothelidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Porrhothelidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Porrhothele antipodiana (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 Ben Britton. CC BY 2.5, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.
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