Tailed forest spider
The tailed forest spider is a slim spider with a long, pointy tail at the end of its body, like a teardrop. Its back has stripes of short silvery hairs. It builds a small web low down in tall grass.
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Fun facts
Its web can be upright, flat or anything in between.
About 4 out of 10 of its webs have a thick zigzag of silk in them, and nobody knows exactly why.
Baby spiders probably fly away on silk threads in the wind. That may be how it reached New Zealand from Australia.
The mother makes cup-shaped egg masses in late summer.
It probably lives for two years at most.
Most asked questions about Tailed forest spider
?Why is it called a tailed spider?
Its long body ends in a pointy tail that sticks out past its silk spinners.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Argiope protensa
- Named by
- L. Koch, 1872
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Araneidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Araneidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Tailed grass spider, Teardrop spider
Where the facts come from
- Argiope protensa (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 Bidgee. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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