Behind the

Recently, Dr. Bang Do from Hubei University, China and his colleagues published in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology their discoveries that help explain why female spiders eat their mates.

Meat-eating partners are quite unique characteristics of some low-level animals. As for the wolf spider, eating mates right after the "rain cloud" is quite common and an interesting point is that the male voluntarily turns himself into dinner for his children.

The cold and cold of the spider girls must also cause the notorious villain, serial killer and cannibalism - doctor Hannibal Lecter - to also bow his head.

But people never explain why this happens.

Some biologists believe that it is simply the result of a hunger of a female spider and a piece of fat has been offered to the cat's mouth. Others claim that male spiders really sacrifice their lives for the perfection of its genetic resources.

Picture 1 of Behind the
Wolf spider

Go find the solution

Dr. Bang and his team collected and studied nearly 400 young wolf spider samples until they became sexually mature.

They in turn matched the females with one male and observed until 1 in 3 cases occurred: 1. Males copulate with females and are eaten; 2. The male copulates with the children and is not eaten; 3. Males are not eaten after half an hour and do not have sex with their children during that time.

After joining the group, they selected 16 female sexes and mated their partners, 10 female sexes but did not eat mates and waited for them to breed. They randomly picked 10 eggs, then continued to observe 20 baby spiders from each group.

The puzzle is solved

After conducting the aforementioned experiments, the scientists gave some statistical results as follows:

- 10% of females eat male spider before intercourse; and even though they were starved before, this rate did not increase.

- If the female spider accepts male spider mating, it will not eat mates during copulation, even if the sexual intercourse takes place within 1 hour and a half.

- 28% of male spiders after sexual intercourse were eaten.

- Successful male sex spider does not want to resist when being attacked by a partner after the "rain cloud".

- Most of the spiders of the meat-eating spiders are more healthy. They have up to 48% chance of surviving their first month of life. Meanwhile, the spider spiders of the spiders are forgiving their partners for only 12% chance of surviving through that time.

What is the benefit of male spider death for later generations through the digestive system of female spiders still needs to be discovered. Maybe the spider's body contains important nutrients, rarely seen in other prey forms.

Even so, no matter what the answer, the general explanation for the biologists' question is now clear. In the case of spiders, the correct spiders are noble fathers.