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Sticker of Red-bellied jumping spider
Bug card No. 3557 of 4,939

Red-bellied jumping spider

Philaeus chrysops
Eats: Other bugs and small animalsSpidersDeserts and dry places8 legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin

The red-bellied jumping spider is a little jumping spider with very bright colours. The male has a glowing orange red belly with a black stripe and white stripes behind his eyes. The female is brown with whitish stripes.

Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
Southern Europe, North Africa and Asia all the way to China and Korea, in warm dry places
Length
0.7 to 1.2 cm (0.28 to 0.47 in)
Top speed
about 1.1 km/h (0.68 mph)
On foot, estimate
What does it eat?
It hunts insects in the hot hours of the day. It does not use a web but jumps right onto its prey.
For real!Photo of Red-bellied jumping spider
Picture by Gilles San Martin. CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Red-bellied jumping spider about 1.2 cm long (0.47 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
as long as 2 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 3.3 secondsmoves 25 times its own body length every second

How big is Red-bellied jumping spider compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Unusually for spiders, the males are often bigger than the females.

2

To impress a female, the male waves his front legs in the air and drums on the ground.

3

The mother guards her egg cocoon until the babies hatch.

4

It does not live in Estonia, it likes warmer countries.

you asked

Most asked questions about Red-bellied jumping spider

?How big is the red-bellied jumping spider?

Usually about 7 to 12 millimetres long.

?Does it make a web?

No. It hunts by jumping onto its prey.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Philaeus chrysops
Group
Spiders
Family
Salticidae
Classification
Arachnida > Araneae > Salticidae
Lives on
Europe, Africa, Asia

Where the facts come from

  1. Philaeus chrysops (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 Gilles San Martin. 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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More from the same group: Spiders

Also at home here: Deserts and dry places

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