40 Fun Facts About Wolf Spider

After wolf spider eggs hatch, where do the tiny spiderlings ride for their first weeks of life?

On her back is where a mother wolf spider carries the whole brood: the spiderlings clamber up her legs as soon as they leave the egg sac and cling on until they can fend for themselves.

A wolf spider discovered in Iran in 2016 was named Lycosa aragogi after a giant spider in which book series?

Harry Potter supplied the name because the spider resembled the animatronic Aragog built for the second film. The name also marked the 20th anniversary of the series in 2017.

In 2022, engineers in Houston pumped air into dead wolf spiders to turn them into what?

Robotic grippers made from spider bodies launched a field its inventors named necrobotics. A puff of air opens the legs, and one spider could lift 1.3 times its own weight.

A wolf spider from southern Italy was the first animal to carry which name, later given to far hairier spiders?

Tarantula first meant a European wolf spider. English speakers later shifted the word to the much bigger, hairier spiders kept as pets, which are not close relatives at all.

Peasants in Apulia once believed that the bite of a native wolf spider could be cured only by doing what?

Dancing was the folk remedy, with music played to get the victim moving. In truth this spider's bite causes no severe symptoms, and the mania probably had little to do with spiders.

Who first proposed the wolf spider that South Carolina adopted as its official state spider in 2000?

A third-grade student from Orangeburg suggested the Carolina wolf spider, and lawmakers agreed. At the time no other U.S. state had an official spider.

What gives away a wolf spider hiding in grass at night when a flashlight beam sweeps across it?

Its eyes shine because a mirror-like layer behind four of them bounces light straight toward its source, so a lawn at night can glitter with tiny bright points.

Two Australian wolf spider species are known to prey on which poisonous amphibians, infamous as invasive pests?

Cane toads are on the menu for both: one species takes small toads, and the other has been recorded biting and killing a large one within an hour.

A female wolf spider that has already bred is more likely to do what to the next male who courts her?

She is more likely to eat him, so courting is risky. After pairing, a male Carolina wolf spider runs away at once to avoid being attacked.

A mother wolf spider carries her round egg sac everywhere, fixed to which body part at the rear of her abdomen?

Spinnerets, the silk organs at her tail end, hold the sac, so she walks with her abdomen raised to keep it off the ground. She can hunt even while carrying it.

How do most wolf spiders catch their insect prey, unlike the orb weavers that wait in garden webs?

They chase it down or pounce on it, with no web at all. Some species prefer an ambush, waiting at the mouth of a burrow for a meal to wander past.

The wolf spider family's scientific name, Lycosidae, comes from the word for wolf in which ancient language?

Greek lykos means wolf, the same root that gives English the word lycanthrope for a werewolf.

The only wolf spider that is completely blind lives in a handful of caves in which U.S. state?

Hawaii's island of Kauai is home to the eyeless spider, which lives in a few lava caves and tracks its prey by vibration and chemical signals instead of sight.

A wolf spider sees better than most of its relatives, but which family, known for telling colours apart, sees best?

Jumping spiders have the sharpest sight of any spider family, thanks to two big front-facing eyes that pick out detail and colour as they stalk prey by day.

Wolf spiders bite people only when provoked or mishandled; what does a bite usually cause?

Minor local pain or itchiness is the usual result. Wolf spiders were once blamed for skin-destroying bites, but a study of more than 500 confirmed bites by one species found none.

How do young wolf spiders travel long distances through the air, giving many species very wide ranges?

Ballooning on silk means a spiderling climbs to a high point, lets out fine threads and is carried off by air currents, sometimes for hundreds of kilometres.

Wolf spiders found wandering indoors in autumn are most often males searching for what?

A mate is what draws them in: males roam widely in autumn looking for females and sometimes blunder into homes and other buildings. The same is true of male spiders in general.

A wolf spider is easily mistaken for a member of which lookalike family, whose mothers carry egg sacs in their jaws?

Nursery web spiders look much alike, but their eyes are all roughly the same size, while a wolf spider has two that are far larger than the other six.

Roughly how many wolf spider species have scientists described worldwide?

About 2,500 species are recognised, living in habitats from coasts to alpine meadows. One genus alone, the thin-legged Pardosa, accounts for more than 500 of them.

Wolf spiders in arid regions build raised turrets around their burrow entrances to keep out what?

Floodwater from rainy spells is the danger, and the turret deflects it like a little wall. Other species plug the hole with pebbles instead.

Wolf spiders of the American genus Sosippus break the family habit of wandering by building what?

A funnel web, a silk sheet with a tube to hide in, makes Sosippus look more like a grass spider. Its rear silk organs are longer than those of other wolf spiders.

Pirate wolf spiders of the genus Pirata live around ponds and marshes, where they are known for what feat?

Running on water comes easily to them, and they can also dive: an air bubble trapped around the body lets the spider breathe while it is under the surface.

Male Schizocosa wolf spiders court females with ground vibrations that they make by doing what?

Drumming their legs on the ground sends a signal the female can feel, though some species rub body parts together instead. Others add a visual show, waving a bristly pair of legs in the air.

One of the largest and rarest wolf spiders survives in one valley on Deserta Grande, in which archipelago?

Madeira's Deserta Grande is its only home. An invading grass is taking over the rocky ground where the spider, whose legs can span 12 cm, hides.

The great fox-spider, a wolf spider feared extinct in Britain, was rediscovered in 2020 on what kind of site?

A military training area in Surrey hid the spider, unseen in Britain since the 1990s. It favours dry, sandy heath, where it burrows and hunts beetles and smaller spiders by night.

The rabid wolf spider cannot carry rabies, so its common name is thought to refer to what?

Its erratic movement, rapid and unpredictable, is the likely origin of the name. The spider is harmless to people and lives from Maine to Florida and west to Texas.

Which insects did a researcher watch invade a Carolina wolf spider's burrow, eat the owner and move in?

Ants turned the tables on the hunter in that sighting, then used the burrow as their own. Scorpions, owls, lizards and even coyotes also eat these big spiders.

What happens to male Carolina wolf spiders in the summer of their first breeding season, at about three years old?

They die that same summer, while females can live on for several breeding seasons. As a result adult males are most numerous in June and adult females in July.

The wolf spider Pardosa pseudoannulata is the dominant predator in East Asian fields of which crop?

Rice growers benefit because the spider's favourite prey is the brown planthopper, a serious pest of the crop. Its venom is being studied as a natural insecticide.

Which French naturalist, famous for his lively books on insects, wrote up his experiments with wolf spiders?

Jean-Henri Fabre turned his patient spider-watching into a book, The Life of the Spider. Charles Darwin, whose later writing he influenced, praised him as a matchless observer.

Carolina wolf spiders mostly eat insects, but they have been seen catching the young of which reptiles?

Banded geckos, as juveniles, have been found as their prey, which shows that North America's biggest wolf spider can overpower small vertebrates as well as crickets and grasshoppers.

What can a brush-legged wolf spider do with a badly damaged leg, at the cost of a slower next moult?

Shed and regrow it: the spider amputates the limb itself and grows a replacement. Spiders regrowing a leg took about 3.7 days longer to moult.

Besides paralysing prey, the Carolina wolf spider's venom is thought to protect the spider itself from what?

Germs in its food are the suspected target: the venom's lycotoxins kill microbes as well as stunning victims, a double role that put it in a new subclass of spider venom.

What does Australia's grey wolf spider build over the entrance to its burrow?

A trapdoor caps the burrow, though it is often left open while the spider hunts. The shape and materials of such lids help experts tell similar-looking species apart.

The tiny wolf spider Aulonia albimana, unseen in Britain since 1985, was found again in 2025 on which island?

Isle of Wight searchers found it in the closing minutes of a boat trip to a remote part of a nature reserve, and nicknamed it the white-knuckled wolf spider.

Which English zoo bred the rare Desertas wolf spider, hatching more than 1,000 spiderlings in one year?

Bristol Zoo collected 25 of the spiders from their island and bred them the following year, hoping to send some of the young home to boost the wild population.

The shore spider, a small wolf spider, lacks the leg-tip hair tufts of other spiders, so it cannot do what?

It cannot climb smooth surfaces, because those tufts are what give other spiders their grip. The shore spider lives mainly near rivers and on farmland in eastern North America.

How do Carolina wolf spiders spend the cold months from November through February?

Hibernating in their burrows carries them through winter, and they are active from March to October. In summer the same burrows stay about 4°C cooler than the surface.

What does a mother wolf spider do if she is separated from the egg sac she has been carrying?

She searches for it diligently, even frantically. One disturbed mother that dropped her sac was seen snatching it up in her jaws and dashing away.

When threatened, the field wolf spider of the southeastern United States first tries to look bigger by doing what?

Raising its front legs is the first bluff. If that fails it lunges toward the attacker to startle it, and only as a last resort does it bite.