Blue-fang skeleton tarantula

Ephebopus cyanognathus

Name means: “blue jaw”

Eats: Other bugs and small animals SpidersRainforests and jungles8 legsNot an insect, but a bug cousin

Its jaws are a bright, beautiful blue. It also has shiny golden rings on its legs.

Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!

Lives in

French Guiana in South America, in warm, rainy forests

Top speed

about 1.5 km/h (0.93 mph)

On foot, estimate

Can it hurt you?

Can bite

What does it eat?

Like other tarantulas, it eats insects and other small animals that come near its burrow.

A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)

Blue-fang skeleton tarantula 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

Grown-up males do not have the blue jaws. They are purple instead.

It digs a burrow and builds up the entrance with bits it finds, so it sticks out a few centimetres above the ground.

Young ones are very nervous, but they get calmer as they grow older.

Where it lives, about 4 metres of rain falls in a year.

Ephebopus cyanognathus (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 unknown author. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

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