Katipō
The katipō is a shiny black spider that lives only in New Zealand. In the south it has a bright red stripe on its back, but in the north it is all dark. It hides in sand dunes near the sea.
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Fun facts
It is a close cousin of the Australian redback spider.
The boy katipō looks very different: white with black stripes and red hourglass marks.
A mother makes five or six egg sacks in early summer, and the babies hatch after 20 to 25 days.
Scientists once thought the red and the black katipō were two different kinds of spider.
There are fewer and fewer katipō, because their dune homes are disappearing.
Most asked questions about Katipō
?Where does the katipō live?
Only in New Zealand, in sand dunes close to the sea.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Latrodectus katipo
- Named by
- Powell, 1870
- Group
- Spiders
- Family
- Theridiidae
- Classification
- Arachnida > Araneae > Theridiidae
- Lives on
- Australia and Oceania
- Also known as
- Katipo
Where the facts come from
- Katipō (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 (c) Dustin Edmundson, some rights reserved (CC BY). CC BY 4.0, 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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