Complete Guide To The Rabid Wolf Spider

Rabid Wolf Spider Notes

• IMPORTANT NOTE: The Rabid Wolf Spider’s informal, common English name is misleading. Spiders cannot harbor the infectious microorganism that causes rabies so there is absolutely no risk of rabies associated with these spiders. It’s just a name.
• Rabid Wolf Spiders belong to family Lycosidae, which is the most common and widespread family of spiders in North America (Bradley 2012).
  • These spiders are abundant across North Carolina and commonly encountered in all habitats, even within the intertidal zone along the North Carolina coast.
  • They are especially common in areas with tall grasses.

Hunting Technique

• Rabid Wolf Spiders are Ground Hunting spiders; instead of passively waiting for prey to approach, they course across the ground, actively hunting insects and other spiders.
  • Rabid Wolf Spiders hunt by sight. They have superb vision and can see in all directions, thanks to the unique arrangement of their eight eyes.
  • A foraging Rabid Wolf Spider covers a lot of ground in the course of a hunt, interspersed with periods of motionlessness during which they watch the landscape for suitable prey.
  • Rabid Wolf Spiders are diurnal creatures. They are active throughout the day and hide only when sufficiently fed or to cool down from high summer heat. Otherwise, they dash across the landscape continuously, pausing only for short periods to scan for prey.
• Unlike many spiders, Rabid Wolf Spiders do not use spider silk to capture or restrain their prey. Instead, they rely on grappling and the immobilizing effect of their venom to overpower other animals.
  • Rabid Wolf Spiders grab their prey, flip onto their backs, and use their eight legs to restrain their prey. From this upside down position, the spiders bite the prey, inject venom, then flip themselves upright quickly. They continue to hold the prey caged within their eight legs until the prey succumbs to the venom.

Impact Of Size Differences

• Like most spiders, Rabid Wolf Spiders are sexually size dimorphic, meaning one sex is larger than the other.
  • In the case of this species, females are larger than males.
  • However, the size difference between the sexes of Rabid Wolf Spiders is much less drastic than that seen in other spiders, especially the Orb Web Building spiders.
    • Female Rabid Wolf Spiders are 75% larger than males on average (based on the total body lengths), while female Golden Silk Orbweaver (Trichonephila clavipes) spiders are more than 325% larger than the males of the species.
    • The smaller size difference in sexes of Rabid Wolf Spiders is probably due to their lifestyle and predatory tactics.
      • As ground hunters that don’t use capture webs, both sexes must physically engage and overwhelm unrestrained prey.
    • However, larger females have greater hunting capacity than males. Compared to males, they can:
      • Grapple with larger prey successfully due to their larger size.
      • Produce more venom than males due to their larger venom glands.
      • Inject more venom over time before exhausting their venom reservoirs.
    • These anatomical and physiological factors help females hunt more effectively and feed more extensively than males (Walker and Rypstra 2001, https://doi.org/10.1674/0003-0031(2001)146[0161:SDIFRA]2.0.CO;2).
      • This, in turn, provides them with the energy they need to produce eggs—an energetically expensive activity irrelevant to male Rabid Wolf Spiders.

Courtship and Reproduction

• Although Rabid Wolf Spiders don’t build webs to capture prey, they do spin silk.
  • These spiders lay down thin draglines of silk as they move through the landscape.
  • These draglines form a means of secondary communication between individual spiders. Males follow draglines to locate females, and vibrate the lines as part of courtship behavior.
• Besides being ferocious and powerful ground predators, female Rabid Wolf Spiders display a fairly unusual level of parental care.
  • Female Rabid Wolf Spiders attach their egg sacs to their spinnerets and haul the cases around with them as they hunt.
  • When the eggs hatch, the spiderlings climb onto the females’ bodies and ride along for a week or two, protected by their much larger mothers.
  • Eventually, the spiderlings drop off the mothers and disperse.