The female spider is distracted by the gift, the male feigns death later reviving to begin copulation
Posted on 10/04/2005 7:58:10 PM PDT by saquin
A British spider has developed a novel way of wooing dangerous females and avoiding getting eaten in the process.
The male nursery web spider (Pisaura mirabilis) faces an aggressive - and bigger - female when he feels the need to mate.
Some male spiders pay the ultimate price for a few moments of pleasure when the female devours them after mating. Even worse, some males are eaten before they have the chance to mate.
To overcome this problem the nursery spider has devised a strategy of offering his thumbnail-sized mate a love-token, such as a dead insect.
But after presenting the gift the male immediately feigns death and collapses at her feet.
And as she becomes preoccupied with sinking her jaws into the insect treat, the male revives, creeps under her and begins copulating.
The extraordinary lengths the male spider goes to are revealed by Trine Bilde, of Aarhus University, the first author of a study by Danish scientists published today in the journal Biology Letters.
Spider evolution is driven in part by a battle between the sexes: males make so many sperm that they can seek many partners through which to pass on their genes, while females have to focus their limited resources.
One way for males to increase their chance of success is to offer a prospective mate a gift of food that will help her make eggs. On rare occasions, some spider species do just this.
But sometimes the male himself becomes the gift and is eaten for his pains.
"It is important at what time in the process of copulation you get eaten," said Ms Bilde.
Over millions of years of sexual conflict, males of the nursery web spider have evolved their novel mating strategy, not seen before in nature, report Ms Bilde and her colleagues.
Ms Bilde called the male's plan - which happened in half the cases observed by the scientists - "death feigning in the face of sexual cannibalism".
It is likely that the males first evolved to present females with gifts, then evolved feigning death as well to boost the odds of living and having offspring with a new partner.
The spiders are common in Britain, where they spin distinctive bell-shaped webs around their young (nursery webs) for shelter.
The female spider is distracted by the gift, the male feigns death later reviving to begin copulation
And as she becomes preoccupied with sinking her jaws into the velvety treat, the male revives, creeps under her and begins copulating.
There. That's better.
What do you want to bet that this is all one word in German? The Germans love to construct long words like that. Schadenfreude is just a minor instance. I recall the word Abendsonnenschein (evening sunshine) from a poem I once memorized, and there are lots of even better ones than that.
ROFL! I just knew this would be a fun thread to visit.
Definately. This one is just begging to become the "joke thread"!
That means I have to ping Perdogg. A few of us did that to one of his threads some months ago and it wasn't even intentional. LOL!
True, but wouldn't it also be evidence of evolution? The spider evolved in that it adapted to the hostile environment in order to preserve the species. (I'd really rather he hadn't, because I'd be content knowing ALL spiders had become extinct.)
Seen this yet?
Cheers,
the knews hound
http://knewshound.blogspot.com/
Too bad this wasn't posted on Friday morning ... by noon there would be several hundred jokes flying around.
Did you know that CATS can't do that?
( Move jaw side to side )
You need to be smacked for posting that. Ewwww!
Yeah, and they are smaller too.
I just pinged two who are sure to get the ball rolling...downhill. :o)
[Freepmail me to get on or off this Not-A-Ping-List.]
When did Hillary die her hair blonde?
Poing.
Figures, just my luck that it's a bit late here in the midwest. Oh well, I can catch up on them in the morning.
I just saw your new tagline. Funny.
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