Five-spotted star-web spider
Uroctea durandi
Eats: Other bugs and small animalsSpidersDeserts and dry places8 legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin
The five-spotted star-web spider is dark, with five yellow spots on its back. It hides under rocks in sunny Mediterranean places. There it builds a clever little tent of silk.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
Around the Mediterranean Sea, under rocks
Length
1.6 cm (0.63 in)
What does it eat?
It catches insects and even millipedes that touch its web.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚as long as 2.5 grains of rice in a row🍽️could run across a dinner table in 2.4 seconds⚡moves 26 times its own body length every second
How big is Five-spotted star-web 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)
Five-spotted star-web spider about 1.5 km/h (0.93 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 is an upside-down tent, about 4 centimetres across, hanging under a rock.
2
The tent has six doors, and two signal threads stick out of each one.
3
When an insect or millipede touches a thread, the spider rushes out of that door and grabs it.
you asked
Most asked questions about Five-spotted star-web spider
?How does the five-spotted star-web spider catch its food?
It waits in its silk tent. When something touches a signal thread, it rushes out and grabs it.
?How big is the five-spotted star-web spider?
About 16 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Uroctea durandi
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Oecobiidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Oecobiidae
- Lives on
- Europe
Where the facts come from
- Uroctea durandi (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 Siga. 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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