Western spotted orbweaver
Neoscona oaxacensis
Name means: “from Oaxaca, a place in Mexico”
The western spotted orbweaver is a fairly big spider with a striking black and white pattern on its round back. Like other orbweavers, it spins a round web shaped like a wheel to catch flying insects.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
Western USA, Mexico and Central America, with some in South America and the Galápagos Islands
Length
0.6 to 1.8 cm (0.24 to 0.71 in)
What does it eat?
It catches flying insects in its round, sticky web.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚as long as 3 grains of rice in a row🍽️could run across a dinner table in 2.2 seconds⚡moves 25 times its own body length every second
How big is Western spotted orbweaver 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)
Western spotted orbweaver about 1.6 km/h (0.99 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
Females are much bigger than males.
2
Some of the biggest ones live on the Galápagos Islands.
3
Spiders from South America have a slimmer body than the ones from North America.
you asked
Most asked questions about Western spotted orbweaver
?How big is the western spotted orbweaver?
Females are about 1 to 2 centimetres long. Males are smaller.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Neoscona oaxacensis
- Named by
- Keyserling, 1863
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Araneidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Araneidae
- Lives on
- North America, South America
- Also known as
- Zig-zag spider
Where the facts come from
- Neoscona oaxacensis (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 Davefoc. Public domain, 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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