Cyclops jumping spider
Opisthoncus polyphemus
Name means: “named after Polyphemus, the one-eyed giant Cyclops from old Greek stories, because its eyes look so big”
The cyclops jumping spider is a small pale yellow-orange spider with white markings. Black rings around its black eyes make them look extra big.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea
Length
6 to 9 mm (0.24 to 0.35 in)
What does it eat?
Like other jumping spiders, it does not wait in a web. It sneaks up on small insects and pounces on them.
How big is it?
How long is it?
💅small enough to sit on your fingernail🍚as long as 1.5 grains of rice in a row🍽️could run across a dinner table in 3.7 seconds⚡moves 30 times its own body length every second
How big is Cyclops jumping 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)
Cyclops jumping spider about 0.98 km/h (0.61 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
Females are a little bigger than males. Males are 6 to 7 millimetres long, females 8 to 9.
2
Like all jumping spiders, it hunts by leaping onto its prey instead of catching it in a web.
3
It was first described in 1867 under a different name, Attus polyphemus.
you asked
Most asked questions about Cyclops jumping spider
?Where does the cyclops jumping spider live?
In Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Opisthoncus polyphemus
- Named by
- L. Koch, 1867
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Salticidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Salticidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Opisthoncus polyphemus (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 Campoplex. CC BY 4.0, 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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