50 free Spider trivia questions with answers. Spiders eat more prey by weight each year than humans eat meat, one species is a vegetarian, one lives underwater, and one in Madagascar spins a web across a river. This quiz covers all of it: how spiders are built (no antennae, hydraulic legs, book lungs, six kinds of silk), the record holders (Goliath birdeater, giant huntsman, Patu digua, Darwin's bark spider), the dangerous ones (black widows, redbacks, brown recluses, Sydney funnel-webs) and the clever ones (Portia, bolas spiders, peacock spiders). It finishes with the culture: Arachne and Minerva, Charlotte's Web, Little Miss Muffet and where the word tarantula came from. Questions run from easy ones for kids who like creepy-crawlies to hard ones for people who know their Mesothelae from their Mygalomorphae. Every answer has been checked against the Wikipedia articles on spiders and the individual species, and each question shows its source. Good for a nature quiz, a classroom or a Halloween round.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Spiders belong to which order?
Araneae
They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in species diversity among all orders of living things.
Q 02Which is the only continent with no spiders?
Antarctica
They have adapted to almost every habitat elsewhere, from mountaintops to one species that lives underwater.
Q 03Unlike insects, spiders lack which sensory feature on their heads?
Antennae
They also have their body segments fused into just two parts, the cephalothorax and the abdomen, joined by a narrow pedicel.
Q 04How do spiders extend their legs, since they have no extensor muscles?
Hydraulic pressure
That is why a dead spider's legs curl inward: the pressure is gone.
Q 05Which spider, named for a Jungle Book character, was described in 2008 as the only mostly herbivorous one?
Bagheera kiplingi
It lives on Central American acacias and eats their protein-rich Beltian bodies; every other known spider is a predator.
Q 06Roughly how much prey do the world's spiders eat each year, according to one estimate?
400 to 800 million tons
That is from an estimated 25 million tons of spiders, more animal weight than all humans eat in meat and fish combined.
Q 07Spider silk is spun from spinnerets fed by up to how many types of gland?
Six
Different glands make dragline, capture, egg-case and wrapping silks; the spiral orb web may be one of the oldest designs.
Q 08In which property does dragline spider silk beat both steel and Kevlar?
Toughness
Toughness means energy absorbed before breaking; silk's stretchiness is what makes it so hard to snap.
Q 09Darwin's bark spider, discovered in Madagascar in 2009, holds what record?
Largest orb webs ever found
Its silk is the toughest biological material ever studied.
Q 10Which is the world's largest spider by mass and body length?
Goliath birdeater
A tarantula of northern South America; the giant huntsman of Laos beats it on leg span at 25-30 cm.
Q 11Patu digua, from Colombia, is by some accounts the smallest spider. Males are about the size of what?
A fifth of a pinhead
Its body measures around 0.37 mm.
Q 12Which family, with about 7,000 species, is the largest of all, making up 13% of the order?
Salticidae
They have some of the best vision of any arthropod, with stereoscopic colour sight, and use it for hunting and courtship.
Q 13Which salticid genus is famous for eating its own kind and improvising hunting tactics?
Portia
Its members remember tactics that worked, a level of problem-solving normally credited to much bigger animals.
Q 21The Australian redback is one of a number of spiders that usually do what while mating?
Eat the male
Females store sperm for up to two years and lay clutches averaging 250 eggs.
Q 22Since an antivenom arrived in 1981, how many people have died from Sydney funnel-web spider bites?
None
A 1927 death of a boy in the suburb of Thornleigh first made the species notorious.
Q 23Who first described the Sydney funnel-web in 1877, naming it Atrax robustus?
Octavius Pickard-Cambridge
He worked from a female specimen in the British Museum; robustus is Latin for sturdy.
Q 14The dancing peacock spiders of the genus Maratus are native to which country?
Australia
They are tiny, mostly 4-5 mm; only the males wear the iridescent 'plate'.
Q 15Which is the only species known to live almost entirely underwater?
The diving bell spider
Argyroneta aquatica eats, mates and lays eggs in an air-filled silk bell, surfacing only to top up its oxygen.
Q 16Bolas spiders catch moths by doing what?
Swinging a sticky ball on a line
They lure male moths in with up to three fake sex pheromones, then reel them in like an angler.
Q 17What is the name for the way small spiders travel by releasing fine threads and riding the wind?
Ballooning
A 2018 study found the Earth's electric fields alone can lift them; sailors have found spiders far out to sea.
Q 18Which two spiders are the only ones in North America with venom considered dangerous to people?
Brown recluse and black widow
Recluse spiders can be told apart by having six eyes in three pairs rather than the usual eight.
Q 19How many eyes does a brown recluse have, unlike most spiders?
Six
They sit in three pairs; the violin mark on its back is not a reliable identifier because other spiders have it too.
Q 20Black widows, redbacks and the New Zealand katipō all belong to which genus?
Latrodectus
Its neurotoxin latrotoxin causes latrodectism; the genus has 34 species including South Africa's button spiders.
Q 24The word tarantula originally referred to a wolf spider named after which Italian town?
Taranto
Lycosa tarantula of the Mediterranean gave its name to the frenzied tarantella dance; the name later stuck to the big hairy Theraphosidae.
Q 25Roughly how many tarantula species have been identified in the family Theraphosidae?
Over 1,000
They span almost 200 genera; New World species defend themselves with irritating urticating hairs.
Q 26Wolf spiders carry their egg sacs how?
Attached to their spinnerets
Once hatched, the spiderlings ride on their mother's back; nursery web spiders, by contrast, carry sacs in their chelicerae.
Q 27Male giant huntsman spiders in Laos reach a leg span of about how much?
25 to 30 cm
That is the widest of any spider, though the Goliath birdeater is heavier.
Q 28Which two spider families have lost their venom glands and kill prey with silk instead?
Uloboridae and Holarchaeidae
Almost every other spider injects venom through fangs at the tips of its chelicerae.
Q 29Arachnophobia affects roughly what share of the world's population?
3.5 to 6.1%
It is one of the most common anxiety disorders, though most arachnids pose little threat.
Q 30In Ovid's Metamorphoses, the weaver Arachne becomes a spider after challenging which goddess?
Minerva (Athena)
The Lydian maiden was credited with inventing linen cloth and nets; her name gives us 'arachnid'.