Recently we have a new resident. My brother found her wondering around outside his bedroom’s window one day.

You may find my new neighbor a bit scary because she is a female Large Woodland Spider (genus Nephila maculata). You can easily recognize her by the bright yellow spots at the underside of the black legs. Its web is quite large (with a 0.5m radius) and has a yellow-gold color. Her species is commonly found in Australia, Africa, South America and Asia.



She is also a big girl. I haven’t really measure her size because she is poisonous and her web is hanging 2.5m from the ground. According to the information on the Internet, she can reach a body length of 4.5cm and has front legs of about 9.5cm. I think my neighbor is bigger than that.

Also, her silk is the strongest produced by any spider. It can capture some very big preys such as grasshoppers or even bats. She is also a good web builder. Although the typhoons destroyed her web, she can rebuild her home in one morning.


I remember I always brought back something from the great nature such as snack skin, leaves, flowers etc back to school so that all the classmates could have a chance to get close to the nature. However, those days are long gone. We see much less snacks these days as the area is more developed.