The Bug Lady

Nephila clavipes

This picture was taken in my garden in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The N.clavipes is very common over there, and it’s one of the spiders I am most familiar with. In English, it is also known as banana spider, or golden orb weaver.

Their name is one of my favorite things in the world. Nephila is Greek for “fond of spinning”. Fond of spinning! How awesome is that?

They’re called golden orb weavers not because of their bodies, but because they make yellow webs that look golden under the sun. They make really big and messy webs, and they are a little sloppy when it comes to maintaining them. When something tears a hole, they just go and patch it and it’s all good, unlike many spiders who build a brand new web every night.

They also like to live in small colonies. We would often have an enormous mess of webs with insect carcasses tangled in it, with 5 or 6 big spiders living in it. Or at least that’s how many we could count, as the females of this species are much, much larger than the males. The females grow up to be about 9cm long (3 1/2 in), while the males don’t grow larger than 1cm (1/2 in). I’ve never seen these spiders mating, but I sure wonder what it looks like. Hm, that sounded so creepy haha.

I should also mention that their webs are very strong. The fibers are stronger than both steel and kevlar, and I always hear about them being considered for several applications, like bulletproof vests, though I never heard anything definitive about the viability of this.

By the way, the Nephila clavipes is completely harmless to humans, like most spiders. Their sting hurts less than a bee’s sting (trust me, I know), and they only bite when you pester them quite a lot. They are perfect for the curious! Besides, how many animals out there come in a silver top and a green bottoms with yellow dots? Perfect, I tell you.

Nephila clavipes by The Bug Lady, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Tags: arachnid, banana spider, golden, Nephila clavipes, orb weaver, spider