American nursery web spider
The American nursery web spider is a brown, long-legged spider that hides in tall grass and bushes. It does not catch food in a web. Instead, it sits very still and grabs insects that come close. The mother is a great carer: she builds a special leafy nursery for her babies.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The mother carries her round egg sac around with her, holding it in her jaws.
When the eggs are nearly ready to hatch, she folds leaves together with silk to make a nursery tent.
The babies live inside the nursery until they shed their skin for the first time, while their mother stands guard nearby.
It has eight eyes in two rows: four in a straight line at the front and four in a U shape behind.
People often mistake it for a wolf spider, because the two look alike.
Most asked questions about American nursery web spider
?Why is it called a nursery web spider?
Because the mother builds a special web, a nursery, where her babies live and she guards them.
?Is it a wolf spider?
No, but it looks a lot like one. You can tell them apart by the way their eyes are arranged.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Pisaurina mira
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Pisauridae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Pisauridae
- Lives on
- North America
- Also known as
- Nursery web spider
Where the facts come from
- Pisaurina mira (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 Judy Gallagher. CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same 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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