European Wolf Spider

• fisiologíaFor all its name, its venom poses little danger to people, and the old belief that its bite caused a frenzied dance (tarantism) has no scientific basis today.
• It gave its name to tarantism: in southern Italy its bite was believed to bring on a nervous fit that could only be cured by dancing for hours, which is where the tarantella comes from.
• It is from this spider that the name tarantula later passed to the large hairy American spiders, to which it is not related.
• It is the original tarantula, the one from Taranto, and the one that gave its name to all the others. Its bite is painful but harmless.
• Tarantism was attributed to it for centuries: its bite was believed to cause a delirium that could only be cured by dancing the tarantella for days. It is now thought that the genuine cases of envenomation were down to the European black widow, and that the rest was a cultural phenomenon.
• When taxonomists applied the name tarantula to the large hairy American spiders, the term shifted completely: today hardly anyone calls the spider that truly was one a tarantula.
• It weaves no hunting web: it waits at the mouth of its burrow and pounces on whatever passes close by.
• The mother carries the egg sac attached to her spinnerets and afterwards carries the young on her abdomen for weeks, until they disperse.
• It has eight eyes in three rows, with two very large ones in the centre that give it excellent vision for a ground spider.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton (arachnid)

Habitat & environment

Dry, bare ground in Mediterranean scrub and steppe

Sources consulted: https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lycosa_tarantula