Hairy golden orb-weaving spider
Trichonephila fenestrata
The hairy golden orb-weaving spider is a big spider from southern Africa with black legs. It spins huge round webs made of golden yellow silk. The webs hang between trees and bushes and shine in the sun.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
South Africa, Lesotho and Eswatini
What does it eat?
It catches flying insects in its big golden web.
How fast is it?
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
Hairy golden orb-weaving 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
Its silk is golden yellow, so the whole web glows like gold.
2
The males can drop a leg to escape when a hungry female tries to eat them.
3
It lives from the seaside up to nearly 1,800 metres high.
4
It even builds its webs in orange orchards and among prickly pear cactus.
you asked
Most asked questions about Hairy golden orb-weaving spider
?Why is its web golden?
The spider makes golden yellow silk, so its big round web shines like gold.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Trichonephila fenestrata
- Named by
- Thorell, 1859
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Araneidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Araneidae
- Lives on
- Africa
- Also known as
- Black-legged golden orb-web spider
Where the facts come from
- Trichonephila fenestrata (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 Diego Delso. CC BY-SA 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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