40 Fun Facts About Jumping Spiders

In 2012 a jumping spider named Nefertiti, picked through a YouTube science contest, proved she could hunt where?

In space, aboard the International Space Station, Nefertiti learned to stalk and catch prey without gravity. Back on Earth she readjusted to gravity and went on show at an insect zoo in Washington, D.C.

Mothers of the jumping spider Toxeus magnus feed their young for nearly forty days on which surprising food?

Milk, or something very like it, seeps from the mother's body and carries about four times the protein of cow's milk. Spiderlings cut off from it at birth did not survive.

East Africa's so-called vampire spider, a jumping spider, gets its taste of blood by hunting which insects?

Mosquitoes that have just fed are its favourite meal, so the spider takes in vertebrate blood second-hand. It prefers the Anopheles kind, the carriers of malaria.

In 1924 a British expedition's naturalist found jumping spiders living at 6,700 metres on which Himalayan peak?

Mount Everest is home to the Himalayan jumping spider, a candidate for Earth's highest permanent resident. Its Latin species name, omnisuperstes, means standing above everything.

The jumping spider genus Bagheera is named after a black panther in which classic story collection?

The Jungle Book gave the genus its name in 1896, and the species kiplingi honours the author. The same scientists named three more spider genera after his characters: Akela, Messua and Nagaina.

An email hoax falsely claimed the harmless two-striped jumping spider was a killer lurking under what?

Toilet seats were the supposed hiding place in a chain email that has circulated since 1999. The real spider lives in Asian rainforests and has no venom of concern to people.

Peacock spiders, whose males fan out rainbow-coloured flaps to dance, all live in which country?

Australia is the only home of the peacock spiders, the genus Maratus. The females are plain and mottled, while the males wear the colours that earned the group its name.

A jumping spider's two huge front eyes are built like which instrument, a tube with a lens at each end?

Telescope is the right comparison: a long tube carries a big front lens and a second one deep inside the head. The design gives some of the best vision of any arthropod, though each eye sees only a narrow strip.

Jumping spiders have no ears, yet a Cornell study found they hear sounds from across a room using what?

Sensory hairs on the body pick up the faint movement of air that a sound makes, from three metres away or more. Low sounds made the spiders freeze, a likely defence against predators such as wasps.

A male peacock spider whose courtship dance fails to impress a watching female risks which fate?

Being eaten is a real risk: a female who is not interested may attack, kill and feed on a persistent dancer. She can also signal that she is unreceptive, which lets him retreat in time.

The jumping spider Salticus scenicus, common on sunny fences and house walls, is named after which striped animal?

Zebra spiders wear black-and-white stripes and are common across the Northern Hemisphere. They often move indoors, where a windowsill corner makes a good hunting post.

Portia jumping spiders, known for cunning stalking, have been nicknamed eight-legged versions of which animals?

Cats came to mind because Portia's hunting tactics are as versatile and adaptable as a lion's. The spiders can even improvise by trial and error when they meet unfamiliar prey.

Myrmarachne jumping spiders wave their front legs like antennae to pass as which insects?

Ants are the model, right down to a narrow waist, and the genus name joins the Greek words for the insect and for spider. High-speed film shows the mimics walk on all eight legs and lift the front pair only at rest.

The oldest known jumping spider fossils, dating from the Eocene epoch, are preserved in which material?

Amber, fossilised tree resin, holds the oldest: they come from the Baltic and are 42 to 54 million years old. Others turned up in resin from Mexico and the Dominican Republic.

The peacock spider Maratus volans got its Latin species name from a mistaken belief that it could do what?

Fly is what volans means, because an early collector thought the males used their flaps as wings to lengthen a leap. The flaps are purely for show, raised like a fan during courtship.

Manchester engineers trained a jumping spider named Kim to leap on command to help them design what?

Micro-robots that move with a spider's agility were the goal, so the team filmed Kim at high speed and scanned her body in 3D. Such spiders can leap six times their own length from a standing start.

The almost vegetarian jumping spider Bagheera kiplingi feeds mostly on which part of acacia trees?

Leaf tips on these trees grow fat- and protein-rich nubs that make up most of the spider's diet. The trees grow them to feed guard insects, which the spider has to dodge to steal a meal.

Most jumping spiders spin no web to catch prey, but they do build small silk shelters nicknamed what?

Pup tents of silk are where the spiders shelter from bad weather, rest at night, moult and guard their eggs. Many also spend the whole winter tucked inside one.

Just before leaping, a jumping spider glues a thread of silk to the surface beneath it to serve as what?

A safety line of silk steadies and brakes the spider in mid-air, and if the leap misses it simply climbs back up. The same tether lets it reach prey on vertical or even upside-down surfaces.

Although jumping spiders are hunters, many species are known to top up their diet with which plant food?

Nectar gives the spiders a sugary supplement, and none are known to eat seeds or fruit. Plants that offer it gain too, because the visiting spiders prey on their pests.

With no muscles to straighten some of their leg joints, jumping spiders extend their legs using what?

Fluid pressure does the work: the spider forces body fluid into its legs to straighten them. The leg spines stand on end during a leap, a sign of the surge inside.

Lucas the Spider, YouTube's animated jumping spider, was first voiced by which relative of his creator?

His nephew gave the character both a name and a voice when animator Joshua Slice posted the first short in 2017. A real species, Salticus lucasi, was later named after the cartoon.

Peacock spiders have a body only four to five millimetres long, roughly the length of what?

A grain of rice is about the size of the whole animal, fan and all. Small as they are, the males of one well-studied kind dance for anything from six to fifty minutes.

The bold jumping spider, one of North America's most common, is known for jaws that shimmer in which colour?

Green and metallic, the jaws flash as the spider moves, and they are showiest in adult males. The species name audax means bold: its describer wrote that it would leap at a threatening hand.

A young bold jumping spider's markings usually start out which colour before turning white with age?

Orange markings on the spiderlings turn white as they mature. An adult is usually recognised by one large, often triangular white spot in the middle of the abdomen, with two smaller ones below it.

Evarcha culicivora, an East African jumping spider, is attracted to the smell of which part of the human body?

Feet attract this spider, which also homes in on the scent of its blood-filled prey. It can pick out the right meal by sight or by smell alone.

Portia jumping spiders time their walk onto another spider's web to coincide with what, hiding their footsteps?

A breeze shakes the web enough to blur the tremors of the hunter's approach. Portia also plucks the threads to imitate a struggling catch, and one kept it up for three days to lure the owner out.

Maratus jactatus, a peacock spider known from just one national park, is better known by which nickname?

Sparklemuffin caught on in news coverage, and a black-and-white relative from the same park is known as Skeletorus. The Latin name jactatus means rocking, after the male's courtship moves.

The regal jumping spider, the largest in eastern North America, is most abundant in which US state?

Florida is the stronghold of the regal jumper, which also lives in the Caribbean. Females can reach 22 mm, and the species is widely kept as a pet.

A campaign by a class in the town of Hollis made the bold jumping spider the official spider of which US state?

New Hampshire made the bold jumper its state spider in June 2021, when Governor Chris Sununu signed the bill the class had campaigned for.

Females of the jumping spider Cosmophasis umbratica choose mates by markings that show up only in which light?

Ultraviolet markings are invisible to people but plain to these spiders, whose eyes reach beyond the violet end of the spectrum. Showy males may pay a price, since bright signals can also catch a predator's eye.

The lenses of a jumping spider's main eyes are fixed in place, so which inner part moves to scan a scene?

The retina slides and swivels behind the fixed lens, much as people move their whole eyes. In species with a see-through body the movement can be watched from outside.

Jumping spiders watched resting at night twitch and dart their eyes in bouts that resemble which human state?

REM sleep in people brings darting eyes and slack muscles, and the resting spiders show hints of both. Their legs curl up during the bouts as the muscles relax.

Jumping spiders judge the distance to prey by comparing a sharp image in each main eye with what?

A blurred copy of the same scene falls on a second layer of the eye, and its fuzziness tells the spider how far away the target is. The main eyes sit too close together for ordinary depth vision.

George and Elizabeth Peckham, pioneers of jumping spider research in the 1880s, were related in which way?

Husband and wife, the Peckhams were fellow teachers in Milwaukee who married in 1880. A society of jumping spider enthusiasts and its journal, Peckhamia, are named in their honour.

Colourful, dancing males earned Habronattus jumping spiders a nickname taken from which showy animals?

Birds-of-paradise lend their name to the paradise spiders, whose males pair bright ornaments with complex dances. The females, by contrast, are drab and well camouflaged.

Rumble-rumps, crunch rolls and grind-revs are names for which part of a male peacock spider's courtship?

Vibrations made by rapid movements of the abdomen accompany the fan dance, and the rumble-rump can start before the male has even seen a female. Even so, females respond more to what they see.

A peacock spider announced in 2016 was named after Li Cunxin, an artistic director in which performing art?

Ballet seemed a fitting tribute for a spider that dances, and Li Cunxin led a major troupe at the time. Museum scientists announced the name alongside others honouring peacock spider researchers.

Evarcha culicivora, nicknamed the vampire spider, lives only around the shores of which African body of water?

Lake Victoria, on its Kenyan and Ugandan shores, is the only place the species is known. There it ignores swarms of lookalike insects and waits for the real thing.

A jumping spider's main eyes are about ten times as sharp as those of which keen-sighted flying insect?

Dragonfly vision is about a tenth as acute as that of the spider's main eyes. The other three pairs of eyes work mainly as motion detectors.