New Zealand nursery web spider
The New Zealand nursery web spider is a big, fast, pale brown or grey spider. Its colours match the stones it lives among. The mother builds a big white silk nursery at the tips of plants to keep her babies safe.
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Fun facts
The mother carries her egg sac in her jaws for at least five weeks.
Its nursery web is not for catching food. It is a home for the babies, and can be 15 centimetres long or more.
The mother guards the nursery at night.
With its legs spread out, a grown-up female can be more than 6 centimetres across.
After about two weeks the babies leave the nest, probably by floating away on silk threads in the wind.
Most asked questions about New Zealand nursery web spider
?What are the big white webs on bushes in New Zealand?
They are nursery webs made by mother nursery web spiders to protect their babies.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Dolomedes minor
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Dolomedidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Dolomedidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Nursery web spider
Where the facts come from
- Dolomedes minor (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 Bryce McQuillan. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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