Wolf spiders: Behavior, bites and other facts

Rather than catching their prey in webs, wolf spiders chase it down, similar to the way a wolf does. However, these spiders hunt alone, not in packs.

Wolf spiders live around the world and are found throughout the U.S. They are especially common in grasslands and meadows, but they also live in mountains, deserts, rainforests and wetlands — anywhere they can find insects to eat, according to the University of Michigan's BioKids website.

These spiders spend most of their time on the ground, but they can climb trees or other objects if they need to. They like to live near stream edges, gravel and low-lying plants.

Wolf spiders sometimes find their way into houses, usually in basements, crawl spaces and garages. They tend to end up indoors after seeking warmer places to hibernate in the winter.

Wolf spiders are usually brown, gray, black or tan, with dark markings — most commonly, stripes, according to the Missouri Department of Conservation. Their coloring acts as camouflage, helping them hide well to catch their prey and evade predators.

Wolf spiders have a distinctive eye arrangement, said Jo-Anne Nina Sewlal, an arachnologist at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago. (Sewlal spoke with Live Science in 2014 and died in 2020.) The front row is composed of four small eyes that are about the same size, arranged in a row. They tend to have two much larger eyes above this row and two medium-size eyes on the top.

Wolf spiders' size varies, and their body lengths range from about a quarter of an inch (0.6 centimeter) to over an inch (3 cm) long, not including their legs. The Desertas wolf spider (Hogna ingens) from Deserta Grande Island in the Atlantic Ocean is one of the largest wolf spider species, with a leg span of 4.7 inches (12 cm), according to the Bristol Zoological Society in England.

Female wolf spiders are typically larger than males.

Wolf spiders are not deadly to humans, although a bite can cause pain and swelling, according to WebMD. They are venomous, but their venom is generally not harmful to humans. In some cases, people can have allergic reactions to a bite, but this is rare.

Wolf spiders tend to bite humans only when the spiders are mishandled or trapped next to the skin, according to Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

Wolf spiders typically roam alone in the night, stalking prey.

They eat mostly ground-dwelling insects, such as crickets, as well as other spiders. Large females may take on small amphibians and reptiles, such as frogs and lizards, according to BioKids. Some species chase down and seize their prey, while others wait for prey to walk by and then ambush it. Wolf spiders often jump on their prey, hold it between their legs and roll over on their backs, trapping their prey with their limbs before biting it and injecting their venom.

After mating, female wolf spiders lay several dozen or more eggs and wrap them in silk, creating an egg sac that they carry around with them.

Mothers are known to be aggressive when carrying their egg sacs. Sometimes, they need to drop their egg sacs to escape predators. If that happens, females search furiously to find the egg sacs and may even pick up another wolf spider's abandoned egg sac to care for.

"After hatching, the spiderlings climb on their mother's back, and she carries them around for several days," Sewlal said. After this, the spiderlings leave their mothers and go off alone. Male wolf spiders typically live for one year or less, while females can live for several years.

To compare a wolf spider and a brown recluse spider (which wolf spiders are sometimes mistaken for) side by side, check out this graphic from the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. It shows the differences between the two types of spider, as well as other spiders that can be confused with brown recluse spiders.