Word.ws English Dictionary

pirate spider

pirate spider noun: any spider of the family Mimetidae, which prey on other spiders.

pirate spider: any spider of the family Mimetidae, which prey on other spiders
Image: Akio Tanikawa, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Noun

pirate spider (plural pirate spiders)

  1. Any spider of the family Mimetidae, which prey on other spiders.
    • Pirate spiders (Family Mimetidae) use aggressive mimicry in their capture of spiders, by producing vibratory stimuli on webs, thereby inducing a predatory response of the resident.1990, George W. Uetz, “Chapter 4: Prey Selection in Web-Building Spiders and Evolution of Prey Defenses”, in David L. Evans, Justin O. Schmidt, editors, Insect Defenses: Adaptive Mechanisms and...
    • Pirate spiders (family Mimetidae) fall into this category and specialize in preying on web-building spiders, and the occasional free-ranging spider.[…]This entices the owner of the web out of hiding, at which point the pirate spider will pin it down with the spines on its legs, and kill it with a...2003, Astri Leroy, John Leroy, Spiders of Southern Africa, page 35
    Synonyms:
    mimetid

Examples of pirate spider in a sentence

  • Pirate spiders also feed on other spiders' eggs and on insects caught in their webs.2003, Astri Leroy, John Leroy, Spiders of Southern Africa, page 35:
  • Pirate spiders (Mimetidae) suspend fuzzy egg sacs from rocks, twigs, and other objects, or sometimes from the web or retreat of another spider they have preyed on.2010, Charley Eiseman, Noah Charney, Tracks & Sign of Insects & Other Invertebrates: A Guide to North American Species, page 33:

Synonyms of pirate spider

Forms of pirate spider

pluralpirate spiders

Questions about pirate spider

What does pirate spider mean?
Pirate spider means any spider of the family Mimetidae, which prey on other spiders.
How do you use pirate spider in a sentence?
Pirate spiders also feed on other spiders' eggs and on insects caught in their webs.
What part of speech is pirate spider?
Pirate spider is a noun.
What is the plural of pirate spider?
The plural of pirate spider is pirate spiders.

Words near pirate spider in the dictionary

  1. pirate rounds
  2. pirate ship
  3. pirate ships
  4. pirate shirt
  5. pirate shirts
  6. pirate spider
  7. pirate spiders
  8. piratebush
  9. pirated
  10. piratelike
  11. pirately

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: pirate spider (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “pirate spider.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/pirate_spider. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.