The Sad Sex Life of Male Orb Spiders
We all know of the female praying mantis and her hunger for smaller male mantises. But popular belief holds that male mantises don’t stand a chance of finding and mating with a female that will not afterwards have him for dinner–when male mantises ask a lady mantis out for dinner this is not what they have in mind.
But scientists are finding that this is not always the case, in fact lady mantises will only succeed in consuming the male mantises sixteen percent of the time in the wild. Whether or not a female mantis eats its male mate depends almost solely on how hungry the female mantises are. But this is not the case in the community of Orb Spiders. The female Orb Spider kills her mate more often than female mantises kill theirs, and the female Orb Spider does not kill her mate out of a need to satisfy her hunger, she just does it because, well, the female Orb’s just are not very nice.
The female Orb Spider is possessed of strong predatory instincts, and unless the female is in an uncharacteristically good mood, the males will almost always be killed by the female Orb. But males seem to not mind sacrificing their lives if it means passing on their genes, nor do they seem to mind sacrificing their own penises. Well, not penises exactly, rather the male Orb Spider will use what is called a “pedipalp” to impregnate those charming female Orbs. The pedipalp is detachable, and each male has two. After sex the male will leave either one or both of his pedipalps in his mate or he will decide he wants to be a “player” and use one on his first mate and he will leave the second in his second mate. The male Orb’s detach their pedipalps in the females in order to successfully plug the female Orb’s vagina, probably to ensure the another man’s sperm will not beat out his own. I bet it would annoy a male Orb to find that, after long exhausting sex that, he wasted his time mating with a female Orb who has already been….well…plugged I suppose. Well he probably won’t be upset for long since he will likely be killed by his female mate.
Do you know of any other insects that eat their mates, or any other bizarre insect mating habits?