If you have ever watched a peacock fan out its feathers in a slow, deliberate arc, you already have a rough idea of what Maratus volans does, except this performer fits on the tip of your fingernail. Known widely as the Flying Peacock Spider, this remarkable little arachnid has captured the imagination of biologists, wildlife photographers, and curious nature lovers across the globe. Its story combines breathtaking color, surprisingly complex behavior, and some genuinely eye-opening science about how animals communicate, attract mates, and survive in competitive ecosystems.
Let us take a proper look at one of nature’s most underrated showstoppers.
What Exactly Is Maratus Volans?
Maratus volans is a species of jumping spider belonging to the family Salticidae and the genus Maratus, which is commonly referred to as the peacock spider group. The species was first described by English arachnologist Octavius Pickard-Cambridge in 1874 and was later transferred to the genus Maratus by Marek Zabka in 1991. When Zabka made the transfer, he remarked that it was difficult to adequately describe the beauty of this spider’s coloring, which suggests the impression it makes even on trained scientists.
The specific epithet “volans” is Latin for “flying,” a name rooted in an early and incorrect belief that the spider used its colorful abdominal flaps as wings. The person who originally sent specimens from New South Wales to Pickard-Cambridge reportedly claimed to have witnessed the spiders using these structures to glide through the air. That claim turned out to be mistaken, but the name stuck, and the spider has been called the Flying Peacock Spider ever since.
In truth, Maratus volans does not fly. It jumps, and it does so with impressive precision, but those iridescent flaps are not for aerial travel. Their real purpose is far more interesting.
Physical Appearance: Size, Color, and Structure
One of the first things people learn about Maratus volans is its size, or rather, its lack of size. Both males and females measure roughly 4 to 5 millimeters in body length, making this spider smaller than most pencil erasers. Despite that miniature scale, the male of the species is packed with visual detail that rivals anything you would find in the tropical bird world.
The male’s abdomen carries flap-like extensions that can be raised, lowered, spread wide, or folded down against the body at will. When fully extended, these flaps display a vivid palette of red, blue, black, and iridescent tones that shift with the angle of light. The colors are not produced solely by pigments. They result from structural coloration, which means the physical microstructure of the spider’s exoskeleton interacts with incoming light to produce the brilliant, shifting hues you see. White hairs line the edges of the flaps, adding contrast and definition to the display.
The female and juvenile spiders of both sexes look quite different. They are predominantly brown, a color that serves a practical purpose, as females are thought to mimic the appearance of leaf scars on dry twigs, providing natural camouflage. While they can be distinguished from related species by subtle color patterns, they are nowhere near as visually striking as the adult males.
All individuals of Maratus volans, regardless of sex, share the extraordinary visual system that makes jumping spiders such effective hunters. They possess eight eyes in total, with two large central eyes that function somewhat like telephoto lenses and a tiered retinal structure that gives them exceptional depth perception and color vision. Remarkably, their visual system extends into the ultraviolet range, enabling them to perceive a broader spectrum of light than humans do.
Where Does Maratus Volans Live?
Maratus volans is native to Australia and has one of the widest distribution ranges within its genus. The species is found across Queensland, New South Wales, the Australian Capital Territory, Western Australia, and Tasmania, making it one of the more geographically widespread peacock spiders. Many other Maratus species occupy narrow, specialized habitats, but M. volans is notably adaptable.
In terms of habitat preference, these spiders are primarily ground dwellers. They are most commonly found in open forest environments with a covering of leaf litter and a sandy or well-drained base. That said, their adaptability means you can also encounter them in dunes, grasslands, scrublands, coastal forests, and open woodlands. If you are bushwalking in a national park or nature reserve along Australia’s east coast, particularly in spring, you stand a reasonable chance of spotting one near low leaf litter.
The species is diurnal, meaning it is active during daylight hours, which aligns with its visually oriented lifestyle. Hunting, courtship, and most social interactions all take place in the light of day.
Diet and Hunting Behavior
Maratus volans is a cursorial hunter, which means it actively pursues prey rather than building webs and waiting. Its diet consists primarily of small insects, including ants and flies, though it will also consume other small arthropods when the opportunity arises.
That remarkable visual system is central to its hunting strategy. The large forward-facing eyes give the spider excellent binocular vision and the ability to judge distances with precision before launching a jump. Peacock spiders can leap distances up to 40 times their body length, a capability that serves both their hunting needs and their escape from predators.
By keeping insect populations in check, Maratus volans and its relatives play a quiet but meaningful role in the ecosystems they inhabit. This kind of insect regulation indirectly benefits surrounding plant life and, in agricultural areas, can offer some degree of natural pest management.
The Courtship Display: Nature’s Most Elaborate Performance at 5mm
If Maratus volans is famous for one thing above all others, it is the courtship ritual performed by males. This display is recognized as one of the most elaborate and multimodal in the entire arthropod world, and researchers have studied it in depth to understand how and why it evolved.
The breeding season runs during the Australian spring, with mature males appearing from August through December and females emerging slightly later. Females release pheromones from the abdomen that can trigger male courtship behavior even before any visual contact occurs, giving males an early signal that a potential mate is nearby.
Once a male detects a female, the display begins. He approaches slowly, lowering his carapace close to the ground as he draws within roughly one body length of her. At this point, he extends his brilliantly colored abdominal flaps to their full width and begins the performance that has made this species an internet sensation.
The third pair of legs, which are noticeably elongated and ornamented with dense tufts of black and white setae, play a starring role. The male raises and waves these legs rhythmically, sometimes for 4 to 50 minutes, depending on the female’s response. He bobs his abdomen up and down, vibrates, dances laterally, and alternates between showing off the iridescent fan and retracting it. His pedipalps flicker throughout, adding yet another layer of visual signaling.
Research using laser vibrometry has revealed that males also produce vibrational signals during courtship, creating substrate-borne vibrations that the female can detect through her legs. This makes the courtship of Maratus volans genuinely multimodal: it combines vivid color displays, precise physical movements, and vibrational communication simultaneously.
The female has the final say. She can accept the male’s advances or signal rejection through an anti-receptivity display, at which point the male typically stops. This system benefits both parties. The male avoids wasting energy on an unwilling partner, and crucially, a conspicuous courtship display in the open carries real predation risk for both spiders, so ending an unsuccessful display quickly reduces that danger.
If the display is accepted, the male proceeds to the pre-mount stage, which follows a highly consistent behavioral sequence. This level of behavioral stereotypy is itself interesting to researchers because it suggests strong selection pressure on the precise order of movements.
Vision, Communication, and Scientific Significance
Maratus volans has become something of a model organism for scientists studying the evolution of complex signaling in animals. The species sits at an interesting intersection of sensory biology, sexual selection theory, and behavioral ecology.
The spider’s visual capabilities are genuinely impressive. Each eye is equipped with a structure analogous to a telephoto lens, paired with a tiered retina that may allow for color discrimination across multiple wavelengths, including ultraviolet light. This sophisticated vision likely drives both prey detection and the precise reading of another individual’s courtship signals.
From an evolutionary standpoint, the question of why such elaborate displays evolved is central to studying this species. Researcher Jakob Bro-Jorgensen has noted that when both sexes can respond adaptively, multiple signals can coexist even when maintaining them carries real costs, because the potential reproductive rewards outweigh those costs. In other words, the male’s spectacular performance is not just vanity. It is a high-stakes honest signal of his quality as a mate.
This kind of research has broader implications for understanding how complexity evolves in animal communication systems, and Maratus volans provides a uniquely tractable and visually compelling system in which to study it.
Predators and Threats in the Wild
For all its charisma, Maratus volans faces real dangers in its environment. Predator documentation for peacock spiders remains limited, but wasps, birds, and larger spider species are considered the most significant natural threats. The conspicuousness of the male’s courtship display, while essential for reproduction, clearly increases his visibility to any passing predator, which is part of why a rejected male benefits from stopping the performance quickly.
Beyond natural predation, the greatest threat to Maratus volans and its relatives is habitat loss. Controlled burns conducted to manage wildfire risk across Australia can destroy the leaf-litter microhabitats these spiders depend on. Deforestation and climate change add further pressure by altering and reducing suitable habitat across the spider’s range.
The conservation status of most Maratus species, including M. volans, remains officially undetermined due to limited research. While M. volans itself is considered relatively widespread and adaptable, the situation for many of its close relatives is more precarious. One species, Maratus sarahae, is listed as critically endangered on the IUCN Red List after a major wildfire destroyed its extremely restricted habitat in Western Australia’s Sterling Range National Park. The fate of that species serves as a reminder that even spiders with wide ranges can face rapid population collapse if key habitat is lost.
Cultural Impact and Public Fascination
Few invertebrates have generated as much genuine public affection as the peacock spiders. Footage of Maratus volans performing its courtship dance has been viewed millions of times online, and the spider has been described as having an almost “pet-like” appeal thanks to its large forward-facing eyes and surprisingly expressive behavior.
Arachnologist Jurgen Otto has been instrumental in bringing these spiders to public attention through photography and video documentation, spending years in the field tracking down species across remote Australian habitats. His work, and that of other dedicated researchers under projects like Project Maratus, has transformed public perception of spiders from feared to fascinating for many people.
The cultural impact of Maratus volans and its relatives has also sparked real conservation interest. When people genuinely care about an animal, funding for research tends to follow. In that sense, the spider’s theatrical personality may be one of its greatest survival tools.
Final Thoughts
Maratus volans is a creature that invites you to rethink your assumptions about small things. Here is a spider no bigger than a grain of rice that sees the world in colors humans cannot perceive, performs one of the most sophisticated courtship displays in the animal kingdom, and has sparked meaningful scientific research into the evolution of communication and signaling.
It is also simply delightful to watch. Whether you are a biologist working on sexual selection theory or someone who stumbled onto a YouTube video at midnight, there is something genuinely captivating about a tiny spider fanning out a jewel-colored display and dancing with everything it has.