Australia's Brown Huntsman Spider: Is It the World's Fastest Eight-Legged Bullet?

Good news, arachnophobes: The spider that might soon hold the title for the fastest on Earth is already probably living in your house. Or, you know, just outside in Australia.

Meet the brown huntsman (Heteropoda jugulans), a large, hairy-legged marvel that scientists recently clocked at a blistering 3.59 meters per second (that’s about 8 mph). For context, the previous record-holder, the Moroccan flic-flac spider, merely tumbles along at a leisurely 1.7 m/s. The huntsman, it seems, prefers to actually run.

The Need for Speed (and Science)

Scientists from the UK and Germany decided it was high time someone figured out just how quickly spiders can scuttle. They gathered 162 species from places like London, Greifswald, North America, and, of course, Australia. Then, with cameras and gridded paper, they essentially set up tiny spider racetracks. Because apparently, that's where we are now.

They also folded in data from other studies, including some backyard research by Dr. Christofer Clemente from the University of the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. Dr. Clemente, in 2021, simply watched the spiders he found chilling in his own garden, curious about how their size affects their zoom. Spiders, it turns out, don't just use muscles; they also employ hydraulic pressure to push their limbs out, which is both impressive and slightly terrifying.

So, about this brown huntsman. It’s roughly the size of a human hand and a common houseguest along Australia’s east coast. While it is venomous, it generally prefers to sprint away from you rather than bite, and its bites are usually more of a mild inconvenience than a trip to the ER. A true gentleman of speed, really.

That peak speed of 3.59 m/s was a brief burst, mind you. Its average sustained speed was closer to 2 m/s, which is still faster than many of us run on a good day. Dr. Clemente suspects huntsman spiders hit a “sweet spot” with their body type — not too big, not too small, just perfectly engineered for a dash.

Dr. Jonas Wolff, a lead author on this extensive new research, noted that this study is the most comprehensive look at spider running speed ever. Which, if you think about it, is a very specific niche to dominate. The findings also showed that bigger spiders aren't necessarily faster, and web-slingers can be just as quick as hunters. There’s a point, it seems, where sheer bulk just slows you down.

So, while the brown huntsman is currently the frontrunner, Dr. Wolff believes there might be even faster huntsman species out there, just waiting for their moment in the scientific spotlight. Somewhere, a tiny eight-legged Usain Bolt is probably stretching.