Blowback: Scientists discover some male black widow spiders cannibalize the female

A new study conducted by a team of scientists from Masaryk University in the Czech Republic has found that males of the black widow species Micaria sociabilis are more likely to consume the females.

Blowback: Scientists discover some male black widow spiders cannibalize the female Spider4

This new study contradicts the common belief of how black widow spiders have obtained their name. The female not only kills her partner, but she eats him directly after sex. In fact, this sexual cannibalism is said to represent the thrilling way a choosy female black widows asserts partner preference. For the males that don’t make the cut—and most of the don’t—the female shows her dissatisfaction by hunting the male down after they insert their sperm-coated palps into the female, devouring him limb by limb.

However, after careful observation from the Masaryk University team, it was discovered that males from the M. sociabilis species ate females typically after the spiders’ first contact and even before any mating occurred. The study observed that the males often born from the summer generation tended to be larger and more aggressive than their counterparts born in the spring.

http://www.sciencerecorder.com/news/scientists-discover-that-some-male-black-widow-spiders-cannibalize-the-female/

Blowback: Scientists discover some male black widow spiders cannibalize the female

Blowback: Scientists discover some male black widow spiders cannibalize the female

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