Sand bear spider
Arctosa perita
Eats: Other bugs and small animalsSpidersDeserts and dry places8 legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin
The sand bear spider is a small wolf spider that lives on sand. Its brown, grey and white spotted body matches the sand so well that it is hard to see. It digs a little burrow in the sand to live in.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
Europe, North Africa, Turkey, the Caucasus and Russia, and now also Canada, on dry sandy ground and dunes
Length
6.5 to 9 mm (0.26 to 0.35 in)
What does it eat?
Like other wolf spiders, it hunts small insects on the ground instead of catching them in a web.
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 2.1 seconds⚡moves 52 times its own body length every second
How big is Sand bear 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)
Sand bear spider about 1.7 km/h (1.1 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 body is only about 6.5 to 9 millimetres long.
2
Its legs are pale with dark rings, like stripy socks.
3
It lives on sandy soil and on dunes by the sea.
4
It was first described in 1799, more than 200 years ago.
you asked
Most asked questions about Sand bear spider
?Where does the sand bear spider live?
On dry sandy ground and dunes in Europe, North Africa and parts of Asia, and now in Canada too.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Arctosa perita
- Named by
- Latreille, 1799
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Lycosidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Lycosidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia, North America
Where the facts come from
- Arctosa perita (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 Bj.schoenmakers. CC0, 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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