Tailed forest spider

The tailed forest spider has a body that ends in a long pointy tail. The tail looks just like a dry autumn leaf or a bit of dead wood, so the spider is very hard to spot. It lives only in New Zealand.

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Fun facts
The mum is about six times bigger than the dad. He is tiny, brown and has no tail.
The mum hangs her egg sacs in a row at the top of the web, like a string of little brown sausages.
Every time she makes a new egg sac, she builds her whole web again so the newest sac sits closest to the middle.
Its web always has an empty V-shaped gap at the top, like a slice cut out of a cake.
Females can be yellow or yellowish green, so not all of them look the same.
Most asked questions about Tailed forest spider
?Where does the tailed forest spider live?
Only in New Zealand, in native forests and sometimes in gardens. It builds its web low between bushes and dead branches.
?Why does it have a tail?
The tail is the end of its body and looks like a dry leaf or dead wood. That helps it hide from hungry birds.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Arachnura feredayi
- Named by
- L. Koch, 1872
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Araneidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Araneidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Scorpion-tailed spider
Where the facts come from
- Arachnura feredayi (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 Steve Kerr. CC BY 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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