Barn spider
The barn spider is a yellow and brown spider with striped legs and a big round tummy. It loves to build its round web in barns, sheds and other wooden buildings. It is the real-life spider behind Charlotte in the book Charlotte's Web.
How big is it?
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Fun facts
In Charlotte's Web, Charlotte's full name is Charlotte A. Cavatica, after the barn spider's scientific name.
It builds its web in the dark, at night, and then hides in a silk-lined hiding spot nearby.
Usually only the females build webs.
If you puff air at it, it may bounce up and down in its web, maybe to look bigger and scarier.
It can tell what has landed in its web just by feeling the silk shake.
Most asked questions about Barn spider
?Is the barn spider the spider from Charlotte's Web?
Yes. Charlotte in the book is a barn spider, and her full name comes from its scientific name.
?How big is a barn spider?
About 2 centimetres long, and big ones can grow a bit over 2.5 centimetres.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Araneus cavaticus
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Araneidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Araneidae
- Lives on
- North America
Where the facts come from
- Barn spider (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by No machine-readable author provided. Abrahami assumed (based on copyright claims).. CC BY-SA 2.5, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.
If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.
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