Description
The mature female is around 1.5 in (38 mm) long and 0.25 in (6.4 mm) in diameter. She is shiny and black in color, with a red marking in the shape of an hourglass on the ventral (under) side of her very rounded abdomen. There is much variation in female size, particularly in egg-carrying (gravid) females. The abdomen of a gravid female can be more than 0.5 in (~1.25 cm) in diameter. Many female widows also have an orange or red patch just above the spinnerets on the top of the abdomen.
The male is either black, or closer to the appearance of the juveniles in color, and is much smaller with a body of less than 1/4 inch (< 0.75 cm).
Juveniles have a distinctly different appearance to the adults, the abdomen is grayish to black with white stripes running across it and is spotted with yellow and orange.
Read more about this topic: Latrodectus Mactans
Famous quotes containing the word description:
“The great object in life is Sensation—to feel that we exist, even though in pain; it is this “craving void” which drives us to gaming, to battle, to travel, to intemperate but keenly felt pursuits of every description whose principal attraction is the agitation inseparable from their accomplishment.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)
“He hath achieved a maid
That paragons description and wild fame;
One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)