Grass cross spider
Argiope catenulata
The grass cross spider is a colourful spider with a yellow front, a black and silvery back and black legs with thin white rings. It hangs head down in a round web with a zig-zag band of silk. It is a common sight in rice fields.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
From India to the Philippines and Papua New Guinea, and since 2019 also in Australia, in rice fields and grassy places
What does it eat?
It catches insects that fly into its web, which helps rice farmers.
How fast is it?
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
Grass cross spider about 1.2 km/h (0.75 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
A female lays 600 to 800 eggs during her short life of 2 to 3 months.
2
Her eggs are kept in a light brown silk bag that hangs in the web.
3
The male is smaller than the female and more brown and yellow.
4
It was found in Australia for the first time in 2019.
you asked
Most asked questions about Grass cross spider
?Where does the grass cross spider live?
In southern and eastern Asia and northern Australia, often in rice fields.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Argiope catenulata
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Araneidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Araneidae
- Lives on
- Asia, Australia and Oceania
Where the facts come from
- Argiope catenulata (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 Jeevan Jose, Kerala, India. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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