I don't like spiders, but they can have (freaky) interesting behaviors

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

I don't like spiders, but they can have (freaky) interesting behaviors

Male spiders are quite often eaten by they lover during reproduction (nice), even before the males have transmitted all they wanted to transmit. It appears that males have developed a new strategy: leave their penis (of course, who cares about their penis?) inside the female's vagina.

Picture from here

The males have a lot of advantages to get rid of their penis:
- all the semen can be transmitted to the females
- other males cannot copulate with the females because a penis is blocking the door
- the males are lighter and, therefore, can fight more efficiently against other males
- and more....

Read the article published today in Biology letters (Lee et al., Emasculation: gloves-off strategy enhances eunuch spider endurance)

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