A species
Regal jumping spider
Phidippus regius
An eight-eyed hunter that pounces like a tiny cat.
You and the regal jumping spider last shared an ancestor about 580 million years ago (on 11 November, if life's history were one year).
Meet a tiny hunter with a curious, almost cat-like face. Two huge dark eyes stare forwards like headlamps, with six smaller eyes giving it views nearly all around. The big eyes see colour and fine detail, while the side eyes are quick to spot movement. It does not spin a web to catch food. Instead it creeps after insects and other tiny creatures by day and pounces like a tiny cat, first fixing a silk lifeline as a safety rope.
This stocky, hairy spider is tiny: an adult female's body is about as long as two grains of rice laid end to end, not counting the legs, and an adult male is a little smaller on average. Males are black with white marks and shiny green-blue jaws that flash violet. Females range from grey to tan, brown or bright orange, with fluffy white leg-like parts near the mouth and four pale tufts of hair near the back eyes. Like all spiders, it has eight legs and two body parts, with no wings or antennae.
It lives mainly in sunny, open places across the south-eastern United States and nearby islands in the Bahamas and the Caribbean, most often in Florida. Look for it by day on tree trunks, garden fences and sunny house walls. It is one of more than 6,000 kinds of jumping spider, the spider family with the most kinds.
Six body lengths in one leap
A trained female named Kim jumped more than six body lengths from standing still. She pushed off with about five times her own weight, and only jumped when she was sure she could make the jump.
A mother that stays with her young
Females spin small silk shelters to rest in at night, to shed their skin, and to lay eggs. They stay with the eggs and young spiders until the little ones leave the nest.
Largest in eastern North America
No other jumping spider in eastern North America grows larger.