Most of what I learned about spider sex I got from Charlotte's Web.
So, spider sex, y'all?
How they do that?
Well, different species do it differently.
And just like the old rhyme, first comes love, second comes marriage then comes the baby
in the baby carriage -- for spiders it's more like first comes love then comes sex, then
sometimes comes death…
Male spiders are much smaller than females.
The female Black Widow, for example, is about 1.5 inches (3.8cm) with a characteristic black
body and red hourglass.
Males, on the other hand, are only HALF the size and are brown!
For spiders, the responsibility to find a mate is on the guys, which means so is the
danger.
Spiders are highly solitary, so finding a female can be tough.
According to a study in Animal Behavior that came out this month, the western black widow
uses pheromones to turn her web into a, sort of, sexual antenna.
Receptors on the spiders front legs can detect the age, mating history and even hunger level
of the female in-question from her pheromones!
If he's DTF he'll hop on her web and to stop other guys from hitting on her, he starts
destroying her web!
THIS IS LIKE SPIDER NEGGING.
Gross.
The web destruction makes the female seem LESS ATTRACTIVE to other males!
Scientists think it reduces the pheromones so they can be alone while they mate; which
goes on for hours and sometimes ends in his death by cannibalism (but not always).
It's a common misconception all black widows kill their mate.
The pheromone signals tell the female's hunger level, remember, so males prefer to mate with
a female who has recently eaten -- no one likes sex when they're hangry anyway.
How spiders "do the deed" can vary too.
Most have something called a "pedipalps" to deposit their sperm into the female spider
-- it's sort of like a spider's penis.
If the female is receptive, he'll deposit his sperm aaaaaaand then hightail it outta
there (because if he survives he can mate again!)
That being said, many spiders are monogamous.
A paper in Biology Letters found the dark fishing spider mates only once not because
it gets eaten, but because they literally can't run their brain and penis at the same
time!!
HAHAHAHA!
Their pedipalp is inflatable, so when they find a receptive female and inflate their
pedipalp, the blood pressure in their body drops so dramatically they become immobilized!
Wow.
That's awful.
After he makes his final deposit, that bulb can't be deflated…
so he lingers for a few hours before he dies, stuck inside the female.
Afterward she either eats him or tosses him away.
Even with all this though, the POINT of the mating isn't for funsies, it's to spread genes.
Recently, scientists discovered the males have a way to influence the spread of their
genes using a recently discovered nerve in their pedipalp!
Apparently, male spiders use this nerve to sense stress and strain during copulation!
The researchers believe males who sense a lot of stress could reduce the sperm load
they deposit, so they don't get metaphorically screwed!
Females mate with a bunch of males, choosing which sperm they want to use for fertilization
and throwing away the stuff they don't want.
This discovery shows the men aren't just fodder, but can strategically deposit some sperm,
and (if they escape) live to fornicate another day.
Man, animal sex can be so weird sometimes.
Take shark sex, for instance -