Shaded orbweaver
Metellina merianae
The shaded orbweaver is a spider that likes dark, shady spots. It most often lives at the entrances of caves. It spins a round web to catch its food.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
From Europe to Central Asia, in caves, burrows and hollow trees
What does it eat?
It catches small flying insects in its round web.
How fast is it?
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
Shaded orbweaver about 1.2 km/h (0.75 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
Besides caves, it also lives in burrows and hollow trees.
2
Its web can be up to about 100 square centimetres, like a square 10 centimetres on each side.
3
It was first described in 1763 by the scientist Giovanni Antonio Scopoli.
you asked
Most asked questions about Shaded orbweaver
?Where does the shaded orbweaver live?
From Europe to Central Asia, mostly at cave entrances, but also in burrows and hollow trees.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Metellina merianae
- Named by
- Scopoli, 1763
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Tetragnathidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Tetragnathidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
Where the facts come from
- Metellina merianae (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 Adrian Tync. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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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