American house spider
The American house spider is a small brownish spider that lives in quiet corners of houses all over the world. It builds a messy, tangled web and waits for insects to get caught. Its colours help it blend in, so most people never notice it.
How big is it?
How long is it?
How big is American house spider compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
If an insect is too quick, the spider can shoot silk at it from a distance and reel it in.
When its food is finished and dried out, it drops the leftovers to the floor to keep its web tidy.
A mother lays about 150 eggs in a papery ball that hangs in the web.
A male and a female often share the same web for a long time.
It has poor eyesight, so it feels the shaking of its web to find food.
Most asked questions about American house spider
?How big is the American house spider?
Its body is only about 4 to 6 millimetres long. With its legs spread out it can be about 2.5 centimetres across.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Parasteatoda tepidariorum
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Theridiidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Theridiidae
- Lives on
- Asia, North America, South America, Europe, Africa, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Common house spider
Where the facts come from
- Parasteatoda tepidariorum (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 Daniel.fox123. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same 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.
European garden spider
Goliath birdeater
Brown recluse
Redback spider
Yellow garden spider
Bold jumping spider
House longhorn beetle
African malaria mosquito
Greenhouse camel cricket
Italian scorpion
Thief ant
Lesser mealworm