Chilean tiger spider
Scytodes globula
The Chilean tiger spider has a small body and very long legs, three or four times as long as its body. It moves slowly and hunts only at night. It catches its food in a very clever way: it spits sticky silk at it.
Fun fact: spiders are not insects. Insects have six legs, spiders have eight. Everyone calls them bugs anyway!
Lives in
Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia, mostly inside houses
What does it eat?
It eats flies, mosquitoes, bees, horseflies and other insects, and also other spiders.
How fast is it?
A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)
Chilean tiger spider about 1.2 km/h (0.75 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
It creeps up on its prey and squirts out sticky silk that glues it down, even if the prey is bigger than the spider.
2
In one test, tiger spiders beat recluse spiders in 12 out of 15 meetings.
3
Including its long legs, it can be from 3 to 7 centimetres across.
4
It likes dark hiding places, like behind picture frames or in cupboards.
you asked
Most asked questions about Chilean tiger spider
?Why is it called a spitting spider?
Because it catches insects by squirting sticky silk at them from a distance.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Scytodes globula
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Scytodidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Scytodidae
- Lives on
- South America
- Also known as
- Araña tigre, Spitting spider, Long-legged spider
Where the facts come from
- Scytodes globula (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 Katzider. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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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