Iberian camel spider
The Iberian camel spider is not a real spider, but a cousin of spiders called a solifuge. It has yellow patches on its legs and big jaws at the front. It only lives in Spain and Portugal, where it hunts at night in dry, open places.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
It sleeps in cracks and under rubbish during the day and comes out to hunt at night.
The mums and young ones dig their own burrows.
A mum lays between 47 and 163 eggs in a burrow.
It can live for about 700 days, which is almost two years.
For more than 200 years it was the only animal of its kind, until scientists found a brown cousin in 2024.
Most asked questions about Iberian camel spider
?Is the Iberian camel spider a spider?
No. It has eight legs like a spider, but it belongs to a different group called solifuges.
?Is the Iberian camel spider dangerous?
No. It has no venom and is a small, shy night hunter.
?What does a camel spider eat?
It eats small creatures, mostly ants and spiders.
Myth buster
Myth: Camel spiders chase people and are very venomous.
Truth: Not true. They have no venom and are small night hunters that would rather run away.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Gluvia dorsalis
- Group
- Scorpions, ticks and friends
- Family
- Daesiidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Solifugae > Daesiidae
- Lives on
- Europe
- Also known as
- Iberian solifuge
Where the facts come from
- Gluvia dorsalis (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 Justin Philbois. CC0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same 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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