Black webspinner
The black webspinner is a small, dark insect that spins silk, but not from its bottom like a spider. It makes the silk with its front feet. It builds a cosy network of silk tunnels and spends almost its whole life inside them.
How big is it?
How long is it?
How big is Black webspinner compared to YOU?
Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The silk comes out of tiny glands in its front feet.
Only the grown-up boys have wings and can fly. The girls never get wings.
The boys like light, so they sometimes fly to lamps at night.
It probably travelled to America in the late 1800s, hidden in date palm cuttings on ships.
The young ones are pale and slowly get darker as they grow up.
Most asked questions about Black webspinner
?What is a webspinner?
It is a small insect that spins silk with its front feet and lives in silk tunnels. It is not a spider.
?Where do black webspinners live?
They came from India and now also live in the southwest United States, often near the base of palm trees.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Oligotoma nigra
- Group
- Other insects
- Family
- Oligotomidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Embioptera > Oligotomidae
- Lives on
- Asia, North America
Where the facts come from
- Oligotoma nigra (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 Jesse Rorabaugh. CC0, 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.
Common earwig
Silverfish
Chigoe flea
Giant earwig
Grannom
Firebrat
Adonis blue
Four-spot orb-weaver
Common rose
Wasp beetle
Ladybird spider
Carolina grasshopper