Western black widow
The western black widow is a shiny black spider. The female often has a red mark shaped like an hourglass on her tummy. The male is much smaller and light brown with stripes. It builds a messy, tangled web instead of a neat round one.
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Fun facts
The mark on its tummy is usually red, but it can also be yellow and, very rarely, white.
It likes to hang upside down near the middle of its web, waiting for insects.
Its web has no neat pattern at all. The threads go every which way.
To say hello, the male taps on the female's web threads with his feet.
The male is only about half as long as the female.
Most asked questions about Western black widow
?How big is a western black widow?
The female's body is about 14 to 16 millimetres long, and the male is about half that size.
?Where does the western black widow live?
In the western part of North America, from southern Canada down to Mexico.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Latrodectus hesperus
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Theridiidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Theridiidae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Western widow
Where the facts come from
- Latrodectus hesperus (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 Dllu. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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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