Wheel spider
Encyclopedia
The Wheel spider, Golden Wheel spider, or Dancing White lady spider (Carparachne aureoflava), is a huntsman spider
native to the Namib Desert
of Southern Africa
. The spider escapes parasitic pompilid wasp
s by flipping onto its side and cartwheeling down sand dune
s at speeds of up to 44 turns per second.
Wheel spiders are up 20 millimeters in size, with males and females the same size. The wheel spider is nocturnal, and a free-ranging hunter. Its bite is mildly venomous, but the spider is not known to be harmful to humans.
The wheel spider does not produce a web. Its principal line of defense against predation is to bury itself in a silk-lined burrow extending 40–50 cm deep. During the process of digging its burrow, the spider can shift up to 10 liters, or 80,000 times its body weight, of sand. It is during the initial stages of building a burrow that the spider is vulnerable to pompilid wasps, which will sting and paralyze the spider before planting eggs in its body. If the spider is unable to fight a wasp off, and if it is on a sloped dune, it will use its rolling speed of 1 meter per second to escape.
Huntsman spider
Sparassidae are a family of spiders known as Huntsman spiders because of their speed and mode of hunting. They also are called giant crab spiders, because of their size and appearance. Larger species sometimes are referred to as wood spiders, because of their preference for woody places...
native to the Namib Desert
Namib Desert
The Namib Desert is a desert in Namibia and southwest Angola that forms part of the Namib-Naukluft National Park, the largest game reserve in Africa. The name "Namib" is of Nama origin and means "vast place"...
of Southern Africa
Southern Africa
Southern Africa is the southernmost region of the African continent, variably defined by geography or geopolitics. Within the region are numerous territories, including the Republic of South Africa ; nowadays, the simpler term South Africa is generally reserved for the country in English.-UN...
. The spider escapes parasitic pompilid wasp
Spider wasp
Wasps in the family Pompilidae are commonly called spider wasps . The family is cosmopolitan, with some 5,000 species in 6 subfamilies...
s by flipping onto its side and cartwheeling down sand dune
Dune
In physical geography, a dune is a hill of sand built by wind. Dunes occur in different forms and sizes, formed by interaction with the wind. Most kinds of dunes are longer on the windward side where the sand is pushed up the dune and have a shorter "slip face" in the lee of the wind...
s at speeds of up to 44 turns per second.
Wheel spiders are up 20 millimeters in size, with males and females the same size. The wheel spider is nocturnal, and a free-ranging hunter. Its bite is mildly venomous, but the spider is not known to be harmful to humans.
The wheel spider does not produce a web. Its principal line of defense against predation is to bury itself in a silk-lined burrow extending 40–50 cm deep. During the process of digging its burrow, the spider can shift up to 10 liters, or 80,000 times its body weight, of sand. It is during the initial stages of building a burrow that the spider is vulnerable to pompilid wasps, which will sting and paralyze the spider before planting eggs in its body. If the spider is unable to fight a wasp off, and if it is on a sloped dune, it will use its rolling speed of 1 meter per second to escape.