|
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 wasps by flipping onto its side
and cartwheeling down sand dunes 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.
|
|
 |
|
|
|
|