Giant house spider
Eratigena duellica
The giant house spider is a big, long-legged brown spider that often lives in and around houses. It builds a flat sheet web with a tunnel at the back, where it waits hidden. When something lands on the web, it rushes out.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
From Europe, also in western Canada and the northwestern USA, often in houses and sheds
What does it eat?
It catches insects and other small creatures that walk onto its web.
How fast is it?
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
Giant house spider 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
It is a funnel weaver, which means its web has a funnel-shaped tunnel to hide in.
2
Until 2018 scientists thought it was the same species as two other giant house spiders. Then they noticed small differences.
3
It came from Europe and now also lives in British Columbia, Washington and Oregon.
you asked
Most asked questions about Giant house spider
?Why do giant house spiders come into houses?
Houses have lots of quiet corners for their webs and plenty of insects to eat.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Eratigena duellica
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Agelenidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Agelenidae
- Lives on
- Europe, North America
Where the facts come from
- Eratigena duellica (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 John Blackwall. 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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