When it hides in a leaf retreat, how does the spider know about prey?

By keeping a claw on a signal thread

Floating through the air on silk threads

Garden Spider

Araneus diadematus

The European garden spider or cross orbweaver (Araneus diadematus) is an orb-weaving spider named for the cross of white blotches on its abdomen. Found from Europe across Asia to Japan, and introduced to North America, it spins upright orb webs on herbs, bushes, forest edges, gardens and buildings. It is most noticeable in late summer and autumn, when the females are fully grown at 10–22.5 mm long; males are much smaller.

Also known as European garden spider, Cross orbweaver, Cross spider

Garden spider abilities

25–30 spokes in one web
The female builds a fresh orb web every day: dry spokes from the centre out to a frame, then a sticky spiral laid round and round.
- A typical adult web has 25–30 spokes set 12–15° apart. Young spiders' webs often have many more.
- Spokes and frame are dry silk from the major ampullate glands. The catching spiral is coated with tiny glue droplets.
- In a breeze of 0.5 m/s, garden spiders built smaller, rounder webs with fewer spiral turns. When it was cooled from 24 °C to 12 °C, they spaced the spiral more widely.
- Webs strung between swaying supports took the same time to build as webs on fixed ones.
Sources [4, 5, 6, 11, 12]
8 legs feeling the webStill debated
The web works like a giant ear. Sitting at the hub with a leg on each of eight spokes, the spider feels the buzz of a trapped insect.
- Computer models of garden spider webs suggest that comparing the vibrations reaching each leg is enough to work out the direction and distance of a buzz. How real spiders use these clues is still being tested.
- The spider can change how vibrations travel by tightening its web, and through the stiffness of its dragline silk.
- Vibrations can travel through dragline silk over a wider range of speeds than through any other known material.
- To study this, scientists tap webs with a tiny 3-millisecond pulse and measure how it spreads.
Sources [8, 13, 15, 16]
25% of young spiders' food is pollen
Before building a new web, the garden spider gathers up the old one and eats it, so the silk can be used again. Pollen stuck to the threads gets eaten too.
- In tests with labelled silk, the protein from an eaten web turned up again in the next web.
- A study of young garden spiders and a relative found that about 25% of their food was pollen and 75% was flying insects.
- The pollen grains were too big to swallow by accident, so the spiders were eating them as real food.
- Because the web is rebuilt every day, this recycling happens every day too.
What young orb weavers eat Whole diet
Pollen: about 25%
The other 75% was flying insects, mainly small flies, bees and wasps.
Sources [4, 14, 17]
4+ white blotches in the cross
The white cross on its back is the garden spider's name badge. The colour around it can be anything from pale yellow to almost black.
- Four or more white blotches across the top of the abdomen form the cross.
- Abdomen colour ranges from yellow through orange and red-brown to almost black.
- Younger and smaller spiders tend to be darker. Grown-up females are usually lighter.
- In Belgium, city spiders turned out no different in colour from country ones (a 2026 study, not yet peer-reviewed).
Sources [1, 2, 3, 18]
1 signal thread to the hideout
Most of the time the garden spider waits on the hub. When the hub is a poor spot, it hides in a leaf retreat and keeps a claw on a signal thread.
- The female hangs head down at the centre of the web, or hides in nearby leaves with one claw hooked on a signal line.
- Scientists think it builds a signal thread out to a retreat when conditions at the hub are not good for listening.
- Its relative, the missing-sector orb weaver, normally watches from a retreat like this.
- Waiting in a hideout gives extra protection from predators.
Sources [1, 8, 13]
300–900 eggs in one sac
In late September the female leaves her web, finds a sheltered crack and wraps hundreds of eggs in a dome of yellow silk.
- She picks a protected place, such as under bark, and lays 300–900 eggs.
- First she spins a silk wall that grows to about 5 mm high in two hours. Then she lays the eggs and wraps them tightly.
- She stays close for a few days to mend the threads, then dies. The eggs spend the winter in the sac.
- A bigger mother makes a bigger sac, but not always more eggs.
Sources [2, 3, 4]
4 km height where ballooning spiders were foundStill debated
In spring the spiderlings leave the egg sac, let out fine silk threads and float away to new places. This is called ballooning.
- The young garden spiders come out in spring and release threads from their spinnerets to be carried off.
- Ballooning spiders of many kinds have been found 4 km up in the sky, and some travel more than 1,000 km.
- Wind was long thought to do all the lifting. In 2018, tests showed that weak electric fields like those in the open air can also set off ballooning and lift spiders.
- Those tests used other small spiders, so how much wind and electricity each help young garden spiders is not settled.
Sources [4, 19, 20]
59 days on Skylab 3
In 1973 two garden spiders, Arabella and Anita, flew to the Skylab space station to find out whether spiders can build webs without gravity. They could.
- The idea came from Judith Miles, a 17-year-old student from Lexington, Massachusetts. Hers was one of 25 student experiments picked from more than 3,400.
- After some muddled first tries, both spiders built almost Earth-like webs once they had got used to weightlessness.
- On Earth their webs are lopsided. The best Skylab web was more even, as if the spiders were missing gravity as a guide.
- They were the first spiders ever taken into space, in July 1973. Anita died in the last week of the 59-day mission.
Sources [10, 21, 22, 23]

Tap a pin on the model or a part below.

4+ white blotches make the cross
- Four or more white blotches across the top of the abdomen form the cross that gives the spider its name.
- The background colour can be yellow, red-brown or almost black.
- Females are at their biggest in late autumn, when the abdomen is full of eggs.
Sources [1, 2, 3]
- Prey is wrapped in silk first, then bitten. The bite stops it moving and starts to digest it.
- The garden spider is shy and only bites people if it is cornered or handled.
- Confirmed bites are rare. They can cause pain, swelling and redness.
Sources [1, 2, 4]
- Two short palps sit beside the jaws.
- In grown-up males the palp tips are swollen bulbs, which they use when mating.
- Males are also smaller and slimmer than females.
Sources [3, 4]
2–3× tougher than nylon or Kevlar
- Silk glands inside the abdomen feed the spinnerets at its tip.
- The safety line and the web's frame come from the major ampullate glands. Tiny protein crystals make that silk stiff, strong and tough.
- The catching spiral is a thread coated with glue droplets. Their recipe changes when the spider goes hungry.
- Weight for weight, spider silk is about as strong as steel and 2–3 times tougher than nylon or Kevlar.
Sources [5, 6, 7]
8 vibration sensors
- An orb weaver's legs are built for spinning orb webs.
- At the hub, each leg rests on a spoke and works like a vibration sensor.
- In a close relative, the wasp spider, males smell females with tiny pores on all of their walking legs.
Sources [1, 8, 9]
12–15° between spokes
- The female hangs head down at the hub, the centre of the web, waiting.
- A typical adult web has 25–30 spokes meeting here. Young spiders' webs often have many more.
- On Earth the spokes are closer together below the hub than above it.
Sources [1, 4, 10]
- Frame and anchor threads set the overall shape of the web.
- Garden spiders fit their web to the space they have, whether small, tall or wide.
- Webs built between swaying supports took as long to build as webs on fixed ones, and came out much the same.
Sources [11, 12]
- Some garden spiders wait in nearby leaves instead of on the hub, holding a signal thread that runs to the web.
- A hideout gives extra protection from predators.
- In autumn the female leaves her web for a sheltered spot to lay her eggs.
Sources [1, 2, 13]
75% of young spiders' food is insects
- Most prey are small flies, bees and wasps.
- A catch is wrapped in silk first and may be kept in the web for later.
- When the spider is full, it attacks and kills fewer of the insects that land.
Sources [1, 4, 14]

Real garden spiders

Photos from Wikimedia Commons. Some of them can repaint the 3D model.

Adult femaleBig, round abdomen with a white cross on a brown background. Body 10–22.5 mm long.Builds the webs · lays the eggs in autumnA female on an oak leaf in Estonia: note the white cross. Photo: Ivar Leidus, CC BY-SA 4.0
Adult femaleBig, round abdomen with a white cross on a brown background. Body 10–22.5 mm long.Builds the webs · lays the eggs in autumnA grown-up female, the one that builds the webs. Photo: Isiwal, CC BY-SA 4.0
Adult femaleBig, round abdomen with a white cross on a brown background. Body 10–22.5 mm long.Builds the webs · lays the eggs in autumnA mother with her egg sac in autumn. Photo: Gg. Any, CC BY-SA 4.0
Adult maleSmaller (4–11 mm) and slimmer, with long legs and swollen palp tips.Searches for females by smell · now and then eaten after matingA male: smaller and slimmer, with long legs. Photo: Peter O'Connor (anemoneprojectors), CC BY-SA 2.0
Adult maleSmaller (4–11 mm) and slimmer, with long legs and swollen palp tips.Searches for females by smell · now and then eaten after matingA male on goldenrod in Germany. Photo: NobbiP, CC BY-SA 3.0
SpiderlingsTiny young spiders fresh from the egg sac in spring. Photos often show them bunched in a small golden ball before they spread out.Hatch in spring · float away on silk threadsSpiderlings bunched together in spring. Photo: Wizpip, CC BY-SA 4.0
SpiderlingsTiny young spiders fresh from the egg sac in spring. Photos often show them bunched in a small golden ball before they spread out.Hatch in spring · float away on silk threadsA ball of spiderlings, just out of the egg sac. Photo: marsupium photography, CC BY-SA 2.0
Orange femaleThe same white cross on an orange to red-brown abdomen. Colour varies a lot from spider to spider.Same species, just a different colour · one nickname is 'orangie'An orange female in Poland: same species, different colour. Photo: Adrian Tync, CC BY-SA 4.0
The pale cross that gives the spider its namePhoto: James Johnstone, CC BY 2.0

Garden spider by the numbers

Measured by scientists in gardens, labs and even space, with comparisons you can picture.

Female body: 10–22.5 mm; body length, legs not included; Female (max)22.5 mmMale (max)11 mm; A big female is about twice as long as the biggest males⁠[24]
Male body: 4–11 mm; slimmer than females, with long legs⁠[24, 3]
Eggs per sac: 300–900; laid in late September in yellow silk⁠[2]
Spokes: 25–30; in a typical adult web; young spiders use more⁠[4]
Spoke angle: 12–15°; between neighbouring spokes⁠[4]
Pollen in diet: 25%; of young orb weavers' food, eaten with the old web⁠[14]
Egg-sac wall: 5 mm in 2 h; the first step in building the egg sac⁠[4]
Wind test: 0.5 m/s; a breeze that made spiders build smaller, rounder webs⁠[12]
Days in space: 59; Arabella and Anita on Skylab 3, 1973⁠[21]
British records: 11,606; sightings logged in Britain up to 2015⁠[3]

Garden spider myths and facts

Eight things people say about garden spiders, checked against the science.

0 of 8 answered

“The garden spider is an insect.”
“Garden spiders are dangerous to people.”
“A garden spider eats its own web.”
“Garden spiders only eat insects.”
“A female garden spider always eats her mate.”
“Putting cobwebs on a cut stops germs.”
“Garden spiders have built webs in space.”
“Baby spiders can travel through the sky.”

Garden spider and orb-weaver records

Record holders from the garden spider and its family, the orb weavers (Araneidae).

First spiders in space
July 1973
Arabella and Anita, two garden spiders
Flown to the Skylab space station for a student experiment on web building without gravity.⁠[10, 21]
Biggest orb web
2.8 m²
Darwin's bark spider, a relative in the same family
Its giant webs hang over streams, rivers and lakes.⁠[27, 20]
Longest web lines
25 m
Darwin's bark spider
Anchor threads long enough to bridge a river.⁠[27, 20]
Toughest spider silk
350 MJ/m³
Darwin's bark spider
On average more than twice as tough as any silk tested before it, and over 10 times tougher than Kevlar.⁠[27]
Widest range of wave speeds
No known material beats it
Spider dragline silk
Vibrations can travel through it over a wider range of speeds than through any other known material.⁠[16]
Longest balloon trips
Over 1,000 km
Ballooning spiders of many kinds
Sailors have found spiders on ships far out at sea. One possible trip was 3,200 km.⁠[20]

A garden spider's life

From egg to egg-laying mother. In Britain the young spend a winter growing, so a whole life can stretch across two years.

Late September
Eggs laid
The mother leaves her web, finds a sheltered crack and lays 300–900 eggs in a yellow silk sac.⁠[2]
Autumn
Last guard
She stays near the sac for a few days, mending threads, then dies.⁠[4, 3]
Winter
Inside the sac
The eggs spend the winter wrapped in silk while the young develop.⁠[4, 3]
Spring
Hatching
Hundreds of spiderlings come out of the sac together.⁠[4]
Spring
Ballooning
They let out silk threads and float off on the air to new places.⁠[4, 19]
First summer
Little webs
Each youngster builds small webs with many spokes and grows. In Britain, spiders that hatched that spring spend the next winter as youngsters.⁠[4, 3]
Next summer to autumn
Grown up
They become adults. Numbers peak in late summer and autumn, when dew shows up the webs.⁠[3, 2]
Late summer
Finding a mate
Males are drawn to the smell of grown-up females and approach them with great care.⁠[25, 4]

Garden spider vs house spider vs crab spider

Three common European spiders you might meet in or near the garden.

Garden spider vs giant house spider vs flower crab spider
	Garden spider	Giant house spider	Flower crab spider
Scientific name⁠[24, 28, 29]	Araneus diadematus	Eratigena atrica	Misumena vatia
Female body length⁠[24, 28, 29]	10–22.5 mm	11–16 mm	7–11.5 mm
Male body length⁠[24, 28, 29]	4–11 mm	10–14 mm	3–5 mm
Where to look⁠[24, 28, 29]	Herbs and bushes, forest edges, gardens, buildings	Warm spots under stones, often in buildings	On flowers
Web⁠[4, 14, 28, 29, 30]	An upright orb web, rebuilt every day, that catches flying insects	A funnel-web spider (family Agelenidae)	None: it ambushes bees, wasps and hoverflies on flowers and uses silk only for its eggs
Colour⁠[3, 31, 29]	Yellow, orange, brown or almost black, with a white cross	Earthy browns, muddy red or yellow	White, pale green or yellow; can change colour in a few days

Sizes are body lengths without legs, from araneae – Spiders of Europe.

Is the garden spider endangered?

Very common across Europe, but it has never had an official Red List check.

IUCN Red List

Not Evaluated (NE)

Trend unknown

The garden spider has no IUCN Red List assessment, so it has no official status or trend. It is still very common: Britain alone had 11,606 records of it up to 2015.⁠[32, 33, 3]

Not assessed by the IUCN (checked 2026)

Threats

Pesticides
Sprays can change how helpful predators hunt even when they do not kill them. Scientists use garden spider webs to test for these hidden effects.⁠[34]
City living
In Belgian cities, garden spiders had smaller abdomens for their body size, which can mean poorer condition or fewer eggs. This 2026 study is not yet peer-reviewed.⁠[18]

What’s helping

Leave the webs
A garden spider rebuilds its web daily and catches small flies, bees and wasps. Leaving autumn webs alone lets females finish their life cycle and lay eggs.⁠[4, 14, 2]
Fewer sprays
Cutting down on garden pesticides avoids the hidden effects on web-building spiders.⁠[34]
Record what you see
Local recording schemes collect spider sightings. Britain had 11,606 garden spider records by 2015.⁠[3]

Garden spider quiz

12 questions. Every answer is somewhere on this page.

Question 1 of 12Score 0

What is the garden spider's scientific name?

Garden Spider field notes

Diet, food web, safety and badges from the Snappit field guide.

Diet & Feeding

Garden Spiders mostly eat flying insects caught in their webs, especially small flies, bees and wasps. Young spiders also eat pollen that sticks to the web.

Primary Foods

Small flies
Bees
Wasps
Pollen
Foraging Method: Ambush

Ecological connections

House FlyPrey
Flies caught in its sticky silk web are prey for the spider.
Great TitPossible predator (unconfirmed)
Tits may snatch spiders from their webs, but this has not been confirmed for the garden spider.
European HornetPossible predator (unconfirmed)
Hornets may prey on spiders, but this has not been confirmed for the garden spider.

Safety

Danger 2/5 · Low

Do not touch or pick up. Garden spiders are shy and only bite if cornered or handled. If one bites, tell an adult and wash the area with soap and water. See a doctor if it swells a lot or you feel unwell.

Traits

Collections

Classification

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Arthropoda
Class: Arachnida
Order: Araneae
Family: Araneidae
Genus: Araneus

Also known as

European garden spider · Cross orbweaver · Cross spider · Diadem spider · Crowned orb weaver · Araneus diadematus

Sources for these garden spider facts

35 studies and references · checked Oct 16, 2026

Frequently Asked Questions

How to identify Garden Spider?

Compare body proportions, leg shape, abdomen markings and the web, if there is one. Eye arrangement can be decisive but rarely shows up in a casual phone photo. A web is a supporting clue, not proof of who built it. Spider Identifier: upload a photo and compare the visible details.

How big is Garden Spider?

4-22.5 mm

How long does Garden Spider live?

up to 730 days

What does Garden Spider eat?

Garden Spiders mostly eat flying insects caught in their webs, especially small flies, bees and wasps. Young spiders also eat pollen that sticks to the web.

Where is Garden Spider usually found?

Gardens, fields, and forests

How does Garden Spider hunt?

Ambush

How many legs does Garden Spider have?

Are garden spiders dangerous?

No. Garden spiders are shy and bite only if cornered or handled, so don't pick them up. Confirmed bites are rare and cause pain, swelling and redness. If one does bite, tell an adult and wash the area with soap and water. Get medical advice if it swells a lot or you feel unwell.

How do you identify a garden spider?

Look for a round abdomen with a cross of four or more white blotches, hanging head down in the middle of a big, upright orb web. The background colour can be yellow, orange, brown or almost black.

How big do garden spiders get?

Females are 10–22.5 mm long, not counting the legs. Males are 4–11 mm and slimmer.

What do garden spiders eat?

Mostly flying insects, especially small flies, bees and wasps. Young orb weavers also get about a quarter of their food from pollen caught on the web, which they eat when they recycle it.

Why do you see so many garden spiders in autumn?

They are fully grown from late summer to autumn, when numbers peak and the females are at their biggest, full of eggs. Dew on autumn mornings also makes the big webs easy to spot.

When and where do garden spiders lay eggs?

In late September the female leaves her web for a sheltered spot such as under bark and lays 300–900 eggs in a yellow silk sac. The young hatch the following spring.

How long do garden spiders live?

Females die soon after laying their eggs in autumn. In Britain the young spend a winter growing before they become adults, so a whole life can stretch across two years.

Did spiders really go to space?

Yes. In 1973 two garden spiders, Arabella and Anita, flew on the Skylab 3 mission for a student experiment. After some muddled first tries they built almost Earth-like webs without gravity.