Wolf Spider – The Opportunistic Hunters

For all those who love reading and learning about different insects, here is another interesting subject “The Wolf Spider”. Well known for their brilliant eyesight, they are energetic hunters and quite robust in their build. This particular species of spider exhibit an athletic behavior and are mostly large and dark in color. Their name is derived from the Greek word Lycosa, meaning Wolf, as they belong to this genus. There are some unique attributes of the Wolf Spiders that make them very different from other spiders.

Features and facts:

Generally the spiders try to catch their prey within the web but wolf spiders, with their brilliantly sharp eyesight and robust body hunt their prey in a violent manner. They are of great interest to the scientists as well, the reason being their distinctive parenting habits. There is no specific place where these creatures can be found, they are present almost in all the parts of the world. Wolf spiders can be most commonly seen in the areas like mountains, forests and deserts where they find their staple food to eat. Another interesting fact is that there are more than 2300 species of these spiders that are available in the world and predominantly around 200 species are found in America.

Appearance of Wolf Spiders:

As they are mostly dark colored inserts, they are usually brown, black or dark gray in color. This dark color of their body helps them in catching prey and also keeps them protected from their enemies, a perfect camouflage! Talking about their size, the male wolf spiders are typically smaller in size than female wolf spiders. You will be amazed to know that their eyes are arranged beautifully in three different rows. Out of the eight eyes, two medium sized ones are located to the sides of the first row, two large ones in the second row and four relatively smaller eyes are placed in the bottom row. Can you visualize the arrangement? Well, it is unique and pretty different.

Wolf spiders are night creatures that prefer to roam alone during the night time. These are solitary insects that like to stalk their prey alone so that they do not have to share their food with anyone else. They are normally found on the ground but some can even climb up trees or even dive into the water just to catch their prey. They mostly prefer to eat insects found on the ground itself but sometimes large wolf spiders even eat vertebrates. Some energetic ones do not wait for their prey, they rather attack and hunt them down but some lazy ones hide in the tunnels or in leaf litter so that they do not have to put in much effort. They have some of the best tools to catch their prey – a robust built, camouflage body color, energetic body and very sharp eyesight. They don’t even mind biting if they feel threatened and beware as their venom is harmful to human beings.