White-banded bird-dropping spider
The white-banded bird-dropping spider has a clever disguise. During the day it sits still on a plant and looks just like a bird dropping. At night it catches insects in a very special web.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its web looks like a simple wheel, but its sticky threads are covered in big droplets of glue.
When an insect flies into the web, the sticky thread breaks off. The spider then pulls the insect up to the middle to eat.
Hungry birds leave it alone because it looks like a bird dropping.
It lives in grasslands and is found from near the sea to over 1600 metres high in South Africa.
Most asked questions about White-banded bird-dropping spider
?Why does it look like a bird dropping?
Looking like a bird dropping helps it hide from animals that want to eat it.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Cyrtarachne ixoides
- Named by
- Simon, 1870
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Araneidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Araneidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa
- Also known as
- Bird dropping araneid spider
Where the facts come from
- Cyrtarachne ixoides (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 Lucarelli. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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