California turret spider
Atypoides riversi
The California turret spider lives in a burrow in the ground. Around the door of its burrow it builds a little tower made of soil, bits of plants and silk. It looks like a tiny castle tower.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
Northern California
Length
1.3 to 1.8 cm (0.51 to 0.71 in)
What does it eat?
It waits at the top of its tower and grabs small insects that walk past.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚as long as 3 grains of rice in a row🍽️could run across a dinner table in 2.2 seconds⚡moves 25 times its own body length every second
How big is California turret 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)
California turret spider about 1.6 km/h (0.99 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 tower is made of soil, plants and silk glued together.
2
The females are bigger than the males.
3
It is a cousin of tarantulas and trapdoor spiders.
you asked
Most asked questions about California turret spider
?Where does the California turret spider live?
In northern California, in a burrow in the ground with a little tower on top.
?How big is the California turret spider?
It is about 1.3 to 1.8 cm long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Atypoides riversi
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Antrodiaetidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Antrodiaetidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Turret spider
Where the facts come from
- Atypoides riversi (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 Marshal Hedin. CC BY-SA 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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