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Sticker of Pacific foldingdoor spider
Bug card No. 3202 of 4,939

Pacific foldingdoor spider

Antrodiaetus pacificus
Name means: “lives in caves, because the genus name comes from Greek words for a cave and a way of life”
Eats: Other bugs and small animalsSpidersForests and woods8 legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin

This dark brown spider lives in a burrow with a door. All day it keeps the door shut. When it gets dark, it opens up and waits at the entrance for a beetle to walk past.

Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
The Pacific coast of North America, from San Francisco Bay to Alaska, in cool damp forests
Length
1.1 to 1.3 cm (0.43 to 0.51 in)
females are a little bigger than males
Top speed
about 1.4 km/h (0.87 mph)
On foot, estimate
What does it eat?
It catches small animals that wander past its burrow, mostly beetles.
For real!Photo of Pacific foldingdoor spider
Picture by G. Blagoev, Centre for Biodiversity Genomics. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Pacific foldingdoor spider about 1.3 cm long (0.51 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 2.6 secondsmoves 30 times its own body length every second

How big is Pacific foldingdoor spider compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It is the spider of its kind that lives farthest north in North America.

2

It digs its burrow in soft sand, moss or rotting wood.

3

The mother keeps her eggs safe inside the burrow, and the spider spends the winter there too.

4

It is busiest in late summer.

you asked

Most asked questions about Pacific foldingdoor spider

?What does the foldingdoor spider eat?

Mostly beetles that walk past the door of its burrow at night.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Antrodiaetus pacificus
Named by
Simon, 1884
Group
Spiders
Family
Antrodiaetidae
Classification
Arachnida > Araneae > Antrodiaetidae
Lives on
North America

Where the facts come from

  1. Antrodiaetus pacificus (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 G. Blagoev, Centre for Biodiversity Genomics. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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: Forests and woods

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