Red-legged golden orb-weaver
The red-legged golden orb-weaver is a big spider with red legs that spins giant webs of golden silk. In the sunshine its web shines like gold. It stays sitting in its web all the time, waiting for dinner to fly in.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
Its webs can be up to 1.5 metres wide, as big as a grown-up lying down.
The silk is so strong that even birds and bats sometimes get caught in it.
The yellow silk attracts bees in the sun, and in the shade it blends in with the leaves.
Instead of building a whole new web, it often just fixes the old part, and eats the old silk.
Several webs are often joined together to make one enormous spider home.
Most asked questions about Red-legged golden orb-weaver
?Why is the web golden?
The silk has yellow colour in it, which shines like gold in the sun and attracts bees.
?What does the red-legged golden orb-weaver eat?
Insects such as flies, mosquitoes, moths, wasps and beetles that land in its web.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Trichonephila inaurata
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Araneidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Araneidae
- Lives on
- Africa
- Also known as
- Red-legged nephila
Where the facts come from
- Trichonephila inaurata (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 Copyright © 2005 David Monniaux. CC BY-SA 3.0, 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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