Bold Jumper

🕷 Scientific name: Phiddipus Audax [ Brave Phiddipus ]

🕷 Endemic to: Primarily the United States, also parts of Canada and Mexico

🕷 Family: Salticidae [ Jumping spiders ]

Hail to the king.

Jumping spiders are the favorite of the arachnid world. It’s not uncommon to meet people who find them endearing - or even cute - in stark contrast to their distaste for all things eight-legged. Their squat bodies, calm disposition, and big eyes are probably to blame.

Of the six thousand species of jumping spiders, though, there’s only one candidate for the best: the American Bold Jumper Phiddipus Audax, named for its audacious and inquisitive nature - a memorable spider with a whole lot of personality, and a whole lot of power.

Bold Jumpers have the cruiser build: round, front heavy, and compact. It’s not a terribly flattering description, but their size is. Not including legspan, their bodies are about 11mm long on average, and it’s important to stress that this is huge for a creature that can launch itself like a cannonball as much as several feet without touching the ground. In fact, the sheer length of their jumps is what earned them the name ‘Bold’ Jumper. They do not skip leg day. It’s distinguished from its salti cousins by its size, its sleek black body, and glittery mouthparts: coral blue no. 5.

Its superior heft comes with no sacrifice to mobility, basically makung Audax a smaller, leaping tarantula. It doesn’t piss around with lameshit ‘hunting’ strategies like camping in a web or jerking off in a little goon burrow waiting for DoorDash - it gets off its ass and hunts. In no small part is this due to its mobility, but it is even more formidable due to its intelligence. The signature technique of the jumping spider is the dragline - silk tethers - used to great efficiency. Jumping spiders use draglines as escape ropes, safety lines for a quick reset from a missed jump, or even as drop cable to descend Mission Impossible style into another spider’s web.

Jumping spiders in general - but particularly geni like Phiddipus and Portia - have some capability for strategy, planning, improvisation, and even creativity. It’s not a stretch to say that most insects are complete dogshit at all of these things. Furthermore, Audax has been observed to identify the type of prey it is stalking and adjust its hunting strategy accordingly. Such tenacity is extremely rare for an arthropod. Put all of these exceptional traits together, combined with the unprecedented bulk and speed of the Bold Jumper, and you have the makings of an apex predator. For a stink bug, this a nightmare creature. You can’t escape it, you just die. In addition to our stinkmaxxing enemies, a whole catalog of crop and conventional pests are on this spider’s kill list: midges, weevils, parasitic worms, locusts, and leafhoppers. Even raiding and pillaging web-spinners is not out of the question for this warrior race of arachnids. Yes, they even eat other (lesser) spiders.

The dragline is not Audax’s only creative use for silk. Since these spiders rely on daytime light to see, they use spin a little tent as a reusable nighttime shelter. As previously mentioned, they’re far above spinning webs for predation. A large silk web is energetically costly, requires constant maintenance, and eventually has to be abandoned. When Audax can hone in on a delicious mosquito across a gaps one hundred times its size and then with a single leap descend on said pest like the angel of death, why bother with a stupid fishing net?

I’m making this spider sound like a cold killing machine,1 but there’s more to it than that. This is one of the only non-mygalomorph (non-tarantula) spiders that makes a good pet. So long as it’s not mishandled, Audax is not a biter, and it’s difficult to unintentionally mishandle. True to their name, they are not skittish at all. Rather, they’re very inquisitive. Spiders that like to investigate new things instead of flee from them are uncommon, but Audax is one of them. Those eyeballs aren’t just for hunting, and when they see something new (provided it isn’t identified as a threat), their first instinct is to get a closer look, often with a very puppy-like head tilt. Some documented behaviors include jumping at cameras and hitching a ride in a palm for the fun of it. Of course, they manage to look adorable doing it.2

I’ve said it before, but this is my favorite spider. And if you live in New Hampshire, Phiddipus Audax is your official state spider3 as of 2021, by unanimous support from the NH Senate. Just to drive home how loved the Bold Jumper is: not only is it the only spider in history to hold such an honor, but its promotion followed the rejection of the red-tailed hawk as NH’s state raptor in 2015 because the bird was considered ‘too violent.’ It beat an American classic at its own game.

This is the critter you think of when you think ‘jumping spider,’ and for good reason: it’s widespread, successful, smart, lovable, iconic - audacious.