A brown huntsman spider (Heteropoda jugulans) has been clocked at a top speed of 3.59 metres per second (13 km/h or 8 mph), making it the fastest of more than 250 spider species analysed by scientists in the UK and Germany. This speed surpasses the previous record-holder, the Moroccan flic-flac spider, which reaches only 1.7 m/s by tumbling downhill.
Research Methodology and Findings
The team collected 162 different spider species, primarily from around London and the German city of Greifswald, but also from North America, southern Europe, and Australia. Running speeds were measured using cameras and gridded paper as a track. The research has been submitted to a scientific journal. They also incorporated data from other studies, including research supervised by Dr Christofer Clemente, an evolutionary biomechanist at the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland.
Dr Clemente's earlier work, published in 2021, focused on spider locomotion. He noted that spiders move using a combination of muscles and hydraulic pressure, a unique method compared to other animals. “Spiders don’t move using just muscle – they use a combination of muscles to retract their limbs and hydraulic pressure to push them outwards,” Clemente explained. “That’s a completely different way of powering locomotion to other animals.”
Brown Huntsman Characteristics
The brown huntsman is native to Australia's east coast and is commonly found in homes in south-east Queensland. These spiders are about the size of a hand and, while venomous, rarely bite humans; when they do, the effects are mild. The peak speed of 3.59 m/s was sustained for only a fraction of a second; the average sustained speed is closer to 2 m/s. “That’s still really fast,” Clemente said.
Implications for Spider Ecology
Dr Jonas Wolff of the University of Greifswald, a lead author of the new research, stated that this is the broadest comparative study of running speed in spiders ever conducted. Running speed influences how spiders interact with their environment, their dispersal range, and their ecological niche. A key finding was that the largest species were not the fastest; instead, there appears to be a threshold in body mass beyond which speed drops due to mechanical constraints in muscle physiology and body plan.
When asked if the brown huntsman is definitively the fastest spider in the world, Dr Wolff said, “I would not rule out there are faster huntsman species than this one out there, which have not been tested yet.”
