Northern bear spider
The northern bear spider is a big grey-brown wolf spider that lives on sandy beaches. Its colour matches the sand so well that it is hard to spot, even when it walks around in daylight. It does not spin a web to catch food.
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Fun facts
It digs a hole in the sand and covers it with silk. Sometimes it hides under a stone instead.
It is one of the easiest wolf spiders to notice in central Europe, because it is so big.
It lives only on sandy shores, never far from the water.
Wolf spiders like it hunt by running after their food instead of waiting in a web.
Most asked questions about Northern bear spider
?How big is the northern bear spider?
The female grows to about 17 millimetres long, and the male to about 14 millimetres.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Arctosa cinerea
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Lycosidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Lycosidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa
Where the facts come from
- Arctosa cinerea (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 Fritz Geller-Grimm. CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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