Spider 'sniffs' to identify 'safe' partner

New research shows that male spiders can identify a 'safe' partner by sniffing spider silk.

According to the BBC news agency, males may have used this skill to avoid starving females, who could eat meat of " different " types. The habit of eating male meat after mating causes these spiders to have the above name.

But the new study shows that males can reduce risk by sniffing the thread to detect whether a female is voracious and therefore dangerous to mate with it. This is also the first study to show that spiders can detect ' chemical cues ' from each other's silk.

Female spider is much larger than male spider - Photo: JC Johnson

Professor James Chadwick Johnson of Arizona State University (USA), who hosted the study, personally fed the spider spiders to make sure he had a group of spiders full of stomach for the experiment. Another group of spiders were not fed for weeks.

Researchers placed male spiders into the spider web of different females to see how they responded. In order to ensure the male spiders only received the cues from spider silk, the experts placed them in a clean silk cover, leaving no remains of the prey previously taken from the spider webs of the females. He was full and hungry.

Professor Johnson said, he and his colleagues even swapped the positions of the children to deceive the males. However, male spiders, which are able to ' sniff ' through their feet, correctly distinguish any 'safe' mate when mating just by crawling on the spider's web. The male spiders perform a more flirtatious dance characteristic when they are on the net of females who are full.

According to Professor Johnson, the goal of his spider behavior studies is to have a better understanding of animals, including spiders, to share living environments with humans. His latest research has been published in the Animal Behavior Journal.