Yucatán rust-rump tarantula
Tliltocatl epicureanus
Eats: Other bugs and small animalsSpidersRainforests and jungles8 legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin
The Yucatán rust-rump tarantula is a big hairy spider from Mexico. Its legs and front part are brown, and its round back end is black with rusty red hairs. That is where its name comes from.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
Central Yucatán in Mexico, in moist forests and rainforests
Length
5 cm (2 in)
What does it eat?
Like other tarantulas, it hunts insects and other small animals on the ground.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚as long as 8 grains of rice in a row🧱as long as 1.5 toy building bricks in a row🍽️could run across a dinner table in 2.6 seconds
How big is Yucatán rust-rump tarantula 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)
Yucatán rust-rump tarantula about 1.4 km/h (0.87 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
The first ones scientists described came from Chichen Itza, a famous old Maya city.
2
Its body can be about 5 centimetres long, and its back legs are even longer.
3
Since 1994 there are rules to stop people from selling wild ones, but some are still smuggled out of Mexico.
4
It lives only in a small part of southeastern Mexico.
you asked
Most asked questions about Yucatán rust-rump tarantula
?Why is it called rust-rump?
Its back end is covered in rusty red hairs.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Tliltocatl epicureanus
- Named by
- Chamberlin, 1925
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Theraphosidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Theraphosidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Tliltocatl epicureanus (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 Maximilian Paradiz from Amsterdam, Netherlands. CC BY 2.0, 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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