Barn spider
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| Araneus cavaticus Keyserling, 1882 |
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Epeira cavatica |
The barn spider (Araneus cavaticus) is a nocturnal, yellow and brown spider with striped legs and a marking on its underside that is typically a black background with two white marks inside the black. Like many other species of orb weavers, it takes down its web and rebuilds another web every evening. Its "orb" web is the archetypical web that contains symmetrical spokes connected by a spiral inside. They hide during the day and at night will sit in the middle of the web and wait for an insect to land on the web when hunting.
They are commonly found in humid parts of North America in late summer and through autumn.
This spider was made well-known in the book, Charlotte's Web, with a particularly interesting point that the spider's full name is Charlotte A. Cavatica, and the barn spider's scientific name is Araneus cavaticus. Also, one of Charlotte's daughters, after asking what her mother's middle initial was, names herself Aranea.
