Lycosa erythrognatha
This happy looking spider is one of the many in the Lycosidae family, also known as wolf spiders, or how we call them in Brazil, grass spiders.
This one is sometimes confused with the dangerous Phoneutria, the wandering spiders, because they also have red chelicerae, but they are not nearly as dangerous.
They have a painful sting, that’s for sure (yes, I know from experience), and some reports say that their stings even caused necrosis in the area. But I think that these must have been cases of wrongly identified spiders. Medium sized, brown looking spiders are just everywhere, and knowing exactly which one bit you is not easy.
They are called wolf spiders (Lycos is Greek for wolf) because they are particularly caring of their offspring. Some of them carry their egg with them at all times, some dig themselves a little hole and layer it with webs, and stay there on top of their egg until it hatches. When the egg hatches the little baby spiderlings climb on top of their mom’s back and she carries them around. It’s so cute.
By the way, erythrognatha means red jaw :)
Lycosa erythrognatha 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, Arthropod, Brazil, Brazilian, Lycosa erythrognata, Lycosidae, poisonous, spider, wolf spider
