Common peacock spider
The common peacock spider is a tiny jumping spider from Australia, smaller than a grain of rice. The male is brightly and beautifully coloured, just like a little peacock. When he wants to impress a female, he lifts up his long third pair of legs and dances.
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Fun facts
Its scientific name, pavonis, comes from the Latin word for peacock.
Only the male has the bright colours. The female is plain.
It belongs to the jumping spiders, which hunt by leaping instead of using a web.
The first male that scientists described was only about 4 millimetres long.
Most asked questions about Common peacock spider
?How big is a peacock spider?
Tiny. The male is only about 4 millimetres long, smaller than a grain of rice.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Maratus pavonis
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Salticidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Salticidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Maratus pavonis (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 Jean and Fred Hort from Perth, Australia. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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