Mondo Knows Facts
The goliath birdeater is the largest spider by mass
Its legs span about 30 centimetres and it can weigh over 170 grams
The goliath birdeater lives in the swamps of northern South America and hunts on the ground rather than in a web. Its fangs are long enough to pierce a human fingernail, though its venom is mild to people. Despite the name, it mostly eats insects, worms and the occasional small vertebrate.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Tags: spiders, amazon, arachnids
The goliath birdeater is the largest spider by mass: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Its legs span about 30 centimetres and it can weigh over 170 grams. The figure is taken from Encyclopaedia Britannica, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a records & extremes fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Records & Extremes shelf, one of 1,090 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.
