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Sticker of Bleeding heart spider
Bug card No. 0509 of 4,939

Bleeding heart spider

Nigma puella
Eats: Other bugs and small animalsSpidersGardens and meadows8 legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin

The bleeding heart spider is a small spider. The female is very pretty: her body is light green with a big dark red blotch, like a little heart. She makes a flat web on the top of a leaf.

Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
Europe and North Africa, and islands in the Atlantic such as the Azores, Madeira and the Canary Islands
Top speed
about 1.2 km/h (0.75 mph)
On foot, estimate
What does it eat?
It eats small insects that get caught in its web.
For real!Photo of Bleeding heart spider
Picture by Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

The male looks quite different from the female. He is reddish brown all over.

2

Its web lies flat across the top of a leaf, like a little sheet.

3

The amount of red stripes on the female's green body is different on every spider.

you asked

Most asked questions about Bleeding heart spider

?What does the bleeding heart spider look like?

The female is light green with a dark red blotch. The male is reddish brown.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Nigma puella
Group
Spiders
Family
Dictynidae
Classification
Arachnida > Araneae > Dictynidae
Lives on
Europe, Africa

Where the facts come from

  1. Nigma puella (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE. CC BY-SA 2.0, 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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