To escape death, these male orb-weaver spiders catapult away after mating:
For the male orb-weaver spider, love bites. If they don’t escape immediately after mating, they are promptly consumed by their female partner. But a new study reveals a trick the males deploy to avoid this fate: They catapult away from their cannibalistic mates in a never-before-described feat of arachnid gymnastics.
To get a better look at how the males make this impressive escape, researchers recorded orb-weavers mating in the lab with high-resolution video, where they closely captured the precious postcoital moments . From the videos, they calculated that the males’ catapulting speed was on average 65 centimeters per second—and that they rotateNext, the scientists examined the male orb-weavers under a microscope.
The researchers say they think female cannibalism and male catapulting evolved “antagonistically” alongside one another. Next, they hope to study female mating choices—and whether females pick mates who are most adept at acrobatically avoiding their postcoital advances.
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