Mediterranean recluse
The Mediterranean recluse is a small brown spider with a violin-shaped mark on its front part. It has six eyes, arranged in a little triangle. It hides by day in dark places like caves and basements, and goes hunting at night.
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Fun facts
It is one of the most invasive spiders in the world, carried everywhere in boxes and goods.
It looks almost exactly like the brown recluse from America.
Its web is thin and messy and is used as a daytime hiding place, not as a trap.
An egg sac holds about 40 eggs.
In 2021, these spiders were found in a university library in Michigan, which closed for two days.
Most asked questions about Mediterranean recluse
?How big is the Mediterranean recluse?
It is about 7 millimetres long, not counting the legs.
?Where does the Mediterranean recluse live?
It comes from the Mediterranean area but now lives in many countries, often in basements, caves and tunnels.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Loxosceles rufescens
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Sicariidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Sicariidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Mediterranean recluse spider
Where the facts come from
- Mediterranean recluse spider (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 Luis Fernández García. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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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