Results tagged “Spiders”

Nephila komaci is the world's largest web-spinning spider. Or at least the female is! Her legspan can be as big as five inches (12 centimeters) wide. The males, however, is less than a quarter of the female's size. Males have legspans that are only one inch wide (2.5 centimeters). There are bigger spiders on the planet (think tarantulas like the goliath birdeater), but they don't spin webs.

Nephila komaci is a member of the golden orb-weaver family. All of these spiders are known to spin very big webs. They can be up to three feet (one meter) wide! The spider's habitat is limited--it lives in small areas in Madagascar and South Africa. Although the spider was first identified at a museum in 2000, scientists didn't know if it still existed in the wild until a field survey in 2007.

Read more about Nephila komaci on National Geographic News.

Put together puzzles featuring spiders on National Geographic Kids.

Get the facts on tarantulas in the Creature Feature.

Photograph by Robert L. Curry


Did you know that there are more than 40,000 species of spiders, but only one species is known to be vegetarian? The jumping spider is named Bagheera kiplingi after the character of Bagheera the panther in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book.

Bagheera kiplingi lives in Mexico and Costa Rica and eats the buds that grow on acacia plants. Ferocious acacia ants live in the acacia's hollow thorns and defend the plants from intruders such as Bagheera kiplingi. The spider must leap from thorn to thorn to collect its food while avoiding the ants, according to Christopher Meehan the biologist who led the study. "It is utterly surreal to see a spider use such effective hunting strategies to hunt a plant," he added.

Read more about this plant-loving spider on National Geographic News.

Put together puzzles featuring spiders on National Geographic Kids.

Watch a video of a jumping spider on National Geographic Kids.

Scientists in Denmark wondered if global warming could make Greenland's wolf spiders bigger. During a ten-year study, they tracked spider sizes. In years when spring came 30 days earlier than usual, some spiders grew exoskeletons that were thicker than average, resulting in bigger bodies! In colder winters, spiders grew thinner exoskeletons. What's more, during warmer springs female spiders grew larger than the male spiders did.



Photograph by Tom Uhlman/AP

As the Earth's temperature warms, bigger spiders could become the norm. Researchers aren't sure why warmer temperatures mean bigger wolf spiders. It could be because their prime hunting season is longer. Or perhaps longer summers allow the spiders to molt--shed their old exoskeletons--more often, letting grow bigger during their lifetimes. The study's co-author, Toke Høye, is pretty sure that bigger spiders will also mean MORE spiders, because larger female wolf spiders have more offspring than smaller ones.

Read more about this spider study on National Geographic News.

Watch a jumping spider video on National Geographic Kids.

Some creepy-looking and yet amazing new species have been found in the Greater Mekong River area in Southeast Asia! Among the most eerie creatures among the 1,068 finds are a pink millipede that can shoot cyanide, and what is probably the world's largest spider--it boasts a legspan of up to 12 inches (30 centimeters). Check out pictures of these spectacular creatures on National Geographic News.

Want more wild Mekong river creatures? Visit the Megafishes gallery.