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Sticker of White banded house jumper
Bug card No. 4723 of 4,939

White banded house jumper

Maratus griseus
Eats: Other bugs and small animalsSpidersHouses and farms8 legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin

The white banded house jumper is a tiny brown or black jumping spider, a cousin of the famous peacock spiders. The female has a ring of white hairs around her head like a halo. The male has a bright red orange band around his eyes.

Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
Australia and New Zealand, in leaf litter, gardens and houses
Length
2 to 6 mm (0.08 to 0.24 in)
Top speed
about 0.8 km/h (0.5 mph)
On foot, estimate
What does it eat?
It hunts small insects in the daytime and pounces on them. Its big front eyes judge the distance perfectly.
For real!Photo of White banded house jumper
Picture by Great Ocean Road Coast Committee (iNaturalist user: gorcc_enviroed). CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

White banded house jumper about 6 mm long (0.24 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
small enough to sit on your fingernailcould run across a dinner table in 4.5 secondsmoves 37 times its own body length every second

How big is White banded house jumper compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its eyes sit in a row around the top of its head, so it can see movement almost all around it.

2

To court a female, the male lifts his third pair of legs and wags his bottom from side to side.

3

If a female is not interested, she copies his dance back at him, and he runs away.

4

It lives for about one year.

5

The mother guards her eggs in a nest until they hatch.

you asked

Most asked questions about White banded house jumper

?How big is the white banded house jumper?

Only about 2 to 6 millimetres long.

?Is it a peacock spider?

Yes. It belongs to the peacock spider genus, Maratus.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Maratus griseus
Group
Spiders
Family
Salticidae
Classification
Arachnida > Araneae > Salticidae
Lives on
Australia and Oceania
Also known as
White-banded house jumping spider

Where the facts come from

  1. Maratus griseus (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 Great Ocean Road Coast Committee (iNaturalist user: gorcc_enviroed). CC0, 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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