African hermit spider
Nephilingis cruentata
Name means: “bloody”
The African hermit spider builds big white webs against tree trunks, walls and rocks. On one side of the web it makes a funnel shaped hiding place. The female has a bright red patch on her underside.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
Tropical and southern Africa, and parts of South America
Length
0.4 to 2.4 cm (0.16 to 0.94 in)
What does it eat?
It catches insects that fly into its big web.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚as long as 4 grains of rice in a row🍽️could run across a dinner table in 1.9 seconds⚡moves 22 times its own body length every second
How big is African hermit spider compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
African hermit spider about 1.9 km/h (1.2 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
Its web can be 1 to 1.5 metres wide.
2
It is often found under the edges of house roofs.
3
Its name cruentata comes from the Latin word for bloody, because of the female's red underside.
4
The female is about 24 millimetres long, but the male is only about 4 millimetres.
you asked
Most asked questions about African hermit spider
?Where does the African hermit spider live?
In Africa and a few parts of South America, often on walls and under roofs.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Nephilingis cruentata
- Named by
- Fabricius, 1775
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Nephilidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Nephilidae
- Lives on
- Africa, South America
Where the facts come from
- Nephilingis cruentata (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 Brian Dell. 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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