Cave Spider

Cave spiders are small variants of the spider that inflict Poison with their attacks. They are exclusively spawned by monster spawners found in mineshafts.

Spawning

Size of a cave spider (left) compared to a regular spider (right).

Cave spiders spawn from spawners in mineshafts at a light level of 0. They are surrounded by cobwebs in corridors.

Drops

When killed, a cave spider drops:

0–2 String. The maximum is increased by 1 per level of Looting, for a maximum of 0-5 string with Looting III.
5 when killed by a player or tamed wolf.
They also have a ¹⁄₃ chance of dropping a Spider Eye when killed by a player or tamed wolf. The maximum amount of spider eyes is increased by 1 per level of Looting. The chance of a cave spider not dropping any spider eyes can be found using the formula 2 / (Looting Level + 3). For example, Looting III gives a ¹⁄₃ chance of not dropping any spider eyes. All other amounts have an equal chance of occurring.

Behavior

Cave spiders inherit their behavior from spiders:

Neutral if under daylight or in light levels of 9 or above, otherwise they are hostile towards players and iron golems. Once they become hostile, light does not affect them.
Climb walls when needed.
Attack by leaping.
Are unaffected by cobwebs and poison.
Can spawn spider jockeys.‌^{[BE only]}

They have some distinctions from regular spiders:

Can fit through a space that is one block wide and ¹⁄₂ block tall.
Can go through the spaces between two different types of (unconnected) fences.
Cannot spawn with status effects.

Being arthropods, they are weak against weapons with the Bane of Arthropods enchantment.

Poison

On Normal or Hard, cave spiders inflict Poison upon attacking.^[1] On Normal difficulty, the poison lasts for 7 seconds and causes 6 damage. On Hard difficulty, it lasts for 15 seconds and causes 12 × 6. Poison damage is not taken when the player's health is at 1.

Sounds

Java Edition:
Cave spiders use the Hostile Creatures sound category for entity-dependent sound events.

Subtitles	Source	Description	Resource location	Translation key	Volume	Pitch	Attenuation distance
Spider hisses ^{[sound 1]}	Hostile Creatures	Randomly	`entity.spider.ambient`^{[sound 1]}	`subtitles.entity.spider.ambient`^{[sound 1]}	1.0	0.8-1.2	16
Spider dies ^{[sound 1]}	Hostile Creatures	When a cave spider dies	`entity.spider.death`^{[sound 1]}	`subtitles.entity.spider.death`^{[sound 1]}	1.0	0.8-1.2	16
Spider hurts ^{[sound 1]}	Hostile Creatures	When a cave spider is damaged	`entity.spider.hurt`^{[sound 1]}	`subtitles.entity.spider.hurt`^{[sound 1]}	1.0	0.8-1.2	16
Footsteps	Hostile Creatures	While a cave spider is walking	`entity.spider.step`^{[sound 1]}	`subtitles.generic.block.footsteps`	0.15	1.0	16

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ ^j The cave spider reuses all of the spider's sound events instead of having its own, resulting in these somewhat unintuitive subtitles - see MC-98316

Bedrock Edition:

Source	Description	Resource location	Volume	Pitch
Friendly Creatures	Randomly	`mob.spider.say`	1.0	0.8-1.2
Hostile Creatures	When a cave spider dies	`mob.spider.death`	1.0	0.8-1.2
Friendly Creatures	When a cave spider is damaged	`mob.spider.say`	1.0	0.8-1.2
Hostile Creatures	While a cave spider is walking	`mob.spider.step`	0.35	0.9-1.1

Data values

ID

Java Edition:

Name	Identifier	Translation key
Cave Spider	`cave_spider`	`entity.minecraft.cave_spider`

Bedrock Edition:

Name	Identifier	Numeric ID	Translation key
Cave Spider	`cave_spider`	`40`	`entity.cave_spider.name`

Entity data

Cave spiders have entity data associated with them that contains various properties.

Java Edition:

Entity data
- Tags common to all entities
- Tags common to all mobs

Bedrock Edition:

See Bedrock Edition level format/Entity format.

Achievements

Icon		Achievement	In-game description	Actual requirements (if different)	Gamerscore earned	Trophy type (PS4)
PS4	Other	Achievement	In-game description	Actual requirements (if different)	Gamerscore earned	Trophy type (PS4)
		Monster Hunter	Attack and kill a monster.	Kill a hostile mob or one of the following neutral mobs: an enderman, a piglin, a zombified piglin, a spider, or a cave spider.	15G	Bronze

Advancements

Advancement	In-game description	Parent	Actual requirements (if different)	Resource location
Adventure	Adventure, exploration, and combat	—	Kill any entity, or be killed by any entity.	`adventure/root`
Monster Hunter	Kill any hostile monster	Adventure	Kill one of these 34 mobs: Blaze Cave Spider Creeper Drowned Elder Guardian Ender Dragon Enderman Endermite Evoker Ghast Guardian Hoglin Husk Magma Cube Phantom Piglin Piglin Brute Pillager Ravager Shulker Silverfish Skeleton Slime Spider Stray Vex Vindicator Witch Wither Wither Skeleton Zoglin Zombie Zombie Villager Zombified Piglin Other mobs, if any, may be killed, but are ignored for this advancement. Only the riders of the chicken jockeys and skeleton horsemen are counted in this advancement.	`adventure/kill_a_mob`
It Spreads	Kill a mob near a Sculk Catalyst	Monster Hunter	Kill one of these 68 (70‌^{[upcoming: JE 1.20]}) mobs near a sculk catalyst: Axolotl Bee Blaze Camel‌^{[upcoming: JE 1.20]} Cat Cave Spider Chicken Chicken Jockey Cod Cow Creeper Donkey Dolphin Drowned Elder Guardian Enderman Endermite Evoker Fox Frog Ghast Goat Glow Squid Guardian Hoglin Horse Husk Llama Magma Cube Mooshroom Ocelot Panda Parrot Phantom Pig Piglin Piglin Brute Pillager Polar Bear Pufferfish Rabbit Ravager Salmon Sheep Shulker Silverfish Skeleton Skeleton Horse Skeleton Horseman Slime Sniffer‌^{[upcoming: JE 1.20]} Stray Spider Spider Jockey Squid Strider Trader Llama Tropical Fish Turtle Vex Vindicator Warden Witch Wither Wither Skeleton Wolf Zoglin Zombie Zombie Villager Zombified Piglin Mobs that drop no experience are ignored for this advancement.	`adventure/kill_mob_near_sculk_catalyst`
Monsters Hunted	Kill one of every hostile monster	Monster Hunter	Kill each of these 34 mobs: Blaze Cave Spider Creeper Drowned Elder Guardian Ender Dragon Enderman Endermite Evoker Ghast Guardian Hoglin Husk Magma Cube Phantom Piglin Piglin Brute Pillager Ravager Shulker Silverfish Skeleton Slime Spider Stray Vex Vindicator Witch Wither Wither Skeleton Zoglin Zombie Zombie Villager Zombified Piglin Other mobs, if any, may be killed, but are ignored for this advancement. Only the riders of the chicken jockeys and skeleton horsemen are counted in this advancement.	`adventure/kill_all_mobs`

History

Java Edition Beta
1.8		Pre-release			Added cave spiders.
Java Edition
1.0.0		Beta 1.9 Prerelease 2			Cave spiders now drop 0-1 spider eye when killed by a player or tamed wolf.
		Beta 1.9 Prerelease 2			The cave spider's health points have been reduced from 20 × 10 to 12 × 6.
		Beta 1.9 Prerelease 4			Cave spiders are now immune to the poison status effect.
		Beta 1.9 Prerelease 4			Cave spiders are now considered arthropods.
1.2.1		12w06a			Cave spiders now swim extremely fast with the water stream toward the player, but seem to be almost not moving against the water stream.
1.2.1		12w06a			Cave spiders can now climb ice blocks.
1.8		14w06a			Cave spiders no longer draw a line of sight through opaque blocks.
		14w06a			Cave spiders have been given the new AI that regular spiders have received.
		14w11a			Cave spiders now run away from creepers that are about to explode.
		?			The cave spider's venom is no longer neutralized by splash potions of weakness, which may or may not be a bug.
1.8.1		pre1			Cave spiders no longer run away from creepers that are about to explode.
1.11		16w32a			The cave spider's entity ID has been changed from `CaveSpider` to `cave_spider`.
October 16, 2017					Jasper Boerstra tweets an image of an updated cave spider texture.
1.14		18w43a			The texture of cave spiders has been changed.
Pocket Edition Alpha
v0.11.0		build 1			Added cave spiders with their jockey variant.
v0.12.1		build 1			Cave spiders now have a walking sound.
					Cave spiders can now spawn with wither skeletons riding them when spawning as spider jockey in the Nether.
					Cave spiders now drop spider eyes.
v0.14.0		build 1			Cave spiders can be ridden by baby zombies and baby zombie villagers.
v0.15.0		?			Cave spiders can now spawn with strays riding them when spawning as spider jockey in snowy biome with a view of the sky.
v0.15.0		?			Cave spiders can be ridden by baby husks.
Pocket Edition
1.1.0		alpha 1.1.0.0			The cave spider's entity ID has been changed from `cavespider` to `cave_spider`.
1.1.0		alpha 1.1.0.0			The cave spider's poison time from attack has been changed to be based on difficulty.
Bedrock Edition
1.10.0		beta 1.10.0.3			The texture of cave spiders has been changed.
Legacy Console Edition
TU5	CU1	1.0	Patch 1	1.0.1	Added cave spiders.
TU12					Cave spiders now swim extremely fast with the water stream toward the player, but seem to be almost motionless against the water stream.
TU12					Cave spiders can now climb ice blocks.
		1.90			The texture of cave spiders has been changed.
New Nintendo 3DS Edition
0.1.0					Added cave spiders.

Issues

Issues relating to "Cave Spider" are maintained on the bug tracker. Report issues there.

Trivia

While a cave spider's hitbox is only 13.9% the volume of a normal spider's, its model's volume is 34.3% as large. The shadow is even larger: compared to the normal spider's shadow it has an area of 49%.