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Sticker of Straight-banded nursery web spider
Bug card No. 4174 of 4,939

Straight-banded nursery web spider

Pisaurina brevipes
Eats: Other bugs and small animalsSpidersGardens and meadows8 legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin

The straight-banded nursery web spider is a long-legged hunting spider from eastern North America. It has a band along its back with straight edges, which gives it its name. The mother spider builds a special web nursery for her babies.

Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
Eastern North America, from Ontario to Florida and west to Kansas, in grassland and bogs
Length
1.1 to 1.3 cm (0.43 to 0.51 in)
Top speed
about 1.4 km/h (0.87 mph)
On foot, estimate
What does it eat?
It is a hunting spider that catches insects and other small animals.
For real!Photo of Straight-banded nursery web spider
Picture by Patrick Edwin Moran. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Straight-banded nursery web 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 Straight-banded nursery web spider compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its babies grow up in a nursery, a bell-shaped tent of spider silk.

2

It looks almost exactly like its cousin, the nursery web spider Pisaurina mira, but its legs are a bit shorter.

3

It seems to like grassland, bogs and swamps.

4

Scientists still know very little about how it lives.

you asked

Most asked questions about Straight-banded nursery web spider

?Why is it called a nursery web spider?

Because the mother builds a bell-shaped silk nursery where her babies grow up.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Pisaurina brevipes
Group
Spiders
Family
Pisauridae
Classification
Arachnida > Araneae > Pisauridae
Lives on
North America

Where the facts come from

  1. Pisaurina brevipes (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 Patrick Edwin Moran. 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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