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Posted on 07/08/2011 1:01:08 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Male black widow spiders can sniff out a well-fed female simply by walking on her web, according to researchers.
The males appear to use this technique to avoid hungry females, which are more likely to cannibalise them.
This habit of eating the male after mating earned the spiders their name.
But this research shows that males can mitigate that risk by sniffing the silk to find out if a female is ravenous and therefore too risky to mate with.
The study is published in the journal Animal Behaviour, and is the first to show that the spiders are able to pick up "chemical cues" from each others' silk.
James Chadwick Johnson from Arizona State University, US, who led the study, hand-fed female black widow spiders to make sure he had a well-fed group of females for the experiment.
Continue reading the main story “ Start Quote
By waving his legs and plucking the web, he's providing vibrations to tell the female, 'I'm not prey'”
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.co.uk ...
That’s just plain ol’ creepy.
If not immediately hungry, would the Black Widow not simply kill the male and spin it up in a web, saving it for later?
Do you like leftovers?
The female spiders are always claiming, “they’re on a diet.”
Isn’t she lovely?
And ~so~ deadly.
After consummating her marriage with the much smaller and weaker male, she kills and eats him.
Oh, she is delicious....and I hope he *was*.
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cool :)
I believe females also have the ability to weave the males sperm into her web, which she can use later. After he’s lunch, that is.
Spidey PMS Sensing...a tingle tells him not to linger
Everything is all cool, until the male has to answer the dreaded question, “Does this red hourglass make my butt look big?”
The question that always nails the male spidey at the end is: “What are you thinking about?”
HA!
“Was it good for you?”
Is this a reason to date a fat girl?
How many many have committed political suicide for the same reason?
Stupid. Just stupid.
Nice!
Nice!
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