Charcoal spider
Tegenaria ferruginea
Name means: “its Latin name comes from the word for rust, for its rusty markings”
The charcoal spider is a reddish brown spider with rusty markings on its back. It builds a funnel-shaped web close to the ground and waits inside. You may meet it in forests and in buildings.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
Europe and the Azores, in woods and buildings
Length
1.1 to 1.4 cm (0.43 to 0.55 in)
males up to 11 mm, females up to 14 mmWhat does it eat?
It catches insects that walk or fly into its funnel web.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚as long as 2.5 grains of rice in a row🍽️could run across a dinner table in 2.6 seconds⚡moves 28 times its own body length every second
How big is Charcoal 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)
Charcoal spider 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
Its funnel web has no back door for escaping, unlike the webs of some cousins.
2
Its legs are much shorter than those of similar spiders.
3
The grown-ups can be found from May to October.
4
Scientists moved it to another group in 2005 and back again in 2013.
you asked
Most asked questions about Charcoal spider
?How big is the charcoal spider?
Females grow up to 14 millimetres and males up to 11 millimetres.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Tegenaria ferruginea
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Agelenidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Agelenidae
- Lives on
- Europe
Where the facts come from
- Tegenaria ferruginea (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 James K. Lindsey. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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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