Veterinarian with a puppy
The wheel spider is an incredibly unique creature found in the Namib desert of southern Africa. Also called the golden or ballerina spider, the white spider evades predators by burrowing into the sand or curling up into a ball and somersaulting across sand dunes at remarkable speed. The main predator of the spider is the parasitic pompylid wasp.
Spiders are usually expected to be found where there is vegetation or other structures to build webs to capture their prey. The wheel spider is among some of the more than 400,000 species of spiders that do not build webs. They are nocturnal hunters, which means that they hunt at night, and their prey is insects, which inject poison. However, spider venom is not considered harmful to humans.
Typical wheel spiders are about three-quarters of an inch (20mm) in diameter. They are also called white dancing spiders because of their color. The spider camouflages itself against the sand dunes through its unique whitish color, merging with the surrounding sand. The species name is Carparachne aureoflava and it belongs to a family of so-called hunting spiders, also called giant crab spiders due to their appearance.
During the day, this spider rests mainly protected from predators inside a burrow that it digs in the sand. The burrow can extend more than 40 cm (15 in) below the surface of the sand. During the process, the spider amazingly lifts more than 80,000 times its own body weight to dig its burrow.
The wheel spider gets its name from its technique of avoiding predators. It is rolled into a ball and thrown over a sand dune. Rolling at an astonishing speed of up to 44 revolutions per second, the spider can outrun a wasp. It then tries to bury itself in another hole before returning to hunt at night.
The main predator of this spider is the parasitic pompylid wasp, commonly called the spider wasp. The pompylid wasp is a solitary wasp that uses the spider as a host to feed its larvae. The spider is paralyzed by the wasp’s stinger and is carried to another inconspicuous spot where a nest already exists, or will build one. There, the wasp will lay an egg in the spider’s abdomen, which is still alive, and the egg will eventually hatch into another wasp. The spider dies at some point in this process.