Wolf Spiders Diet

Wolf spiders belong to the Lycosidae family. Wolf spiders live on the ground and like to hide, so they are often difficult to find and tough to catch. Wolf spiders vary in size, from a half an inch to nearly two inches, are usually brown or gray in color, which helps to camouflage them from predators, and are hairy in appearance. Wolf spiders have excellent eyesight and a keen sense of touch.

  1. Characteristics

    • Wolf spiders can be found in many different types of environments, from deserts to mountains to coastal areas. Wolf spiders have eight eyes in three separate rows. The top row consists of two medium sized eyes, the middle row two large eyes and the bottom has four small eyes. With this set of eyes, the wolf spider can see very well, which is good because they rely on their eyesight to hunt. Interestingly, their eyes reflect light and can easily be spotted at night. The shine is caused by a membranous layer, known as a tapetum and is thought to enhance the wolf spider's vision at night. Wolf spiders are actually very shy and nonconfrontational. They will only attack if provoked. Male wolf spiders live about a year, usually dying in the summer when it matures while female wolf spiders can live for several years.

    Food

    • A wolf spider's diet consists of insects such as flies, mosquitoes, crickets and beetle larvae. They will also eat other spiders. Wolf spiders are able to eat a prey item that is their own size and even a bit larger, such as lizards and frogs. A wolf spider hunts its prey. It will sit and patiently wait for its food and then capture it usually by ambushing it and taking its prey by surprise. When prey is caught, the wolf spider will use it's legs to grasp the prey and it's jaw to crush it. Once the prey is captured, the wolf spider injects venom into its prey by using its fang-like mouthparts and in doing this the digestion process is started.
      Wolf spiders sometimes scavenge for nutrition by feeding off of insect carcasses. This is not as common but is known to be one way for the wolf spider to get nutrients.

      According to National Geographic News, "what they eat from the prey they do catch will depend on how much protein is in the prey and what [the predator's] last meal was. If they had a lipid-rich meal the day before, then the next day they would eat more prey containing lots of protein."