The spiders’ leap to survival is a “fantastic kinetic performance.”
is unique among spiders in that males soar through the air to avoid sexual cannibalism, the researchers say.is a social species that’s native to countries such as Japan and Korea. Up to 300 individual spiders can come together to weave an entire neighborhood of webs. While studyingsexual behavior, arachnologist Shichang Zhang and colleagues noticed that sex seemed to always end with a catapulting male.
High-resolution video of mating partners clocked the male arachnids’ speed from around 32 cm/s to 88 cm/s, the researchers report. That’s equal to just under 1 mile per hour to nearly 2 mph.spider avoids being eaten by a female after sex by leveraging hydraulic pressure to extend leg joints and fling himself away, seen here first at about one-fiftieth actual speed and then at normal speed.
The jump looks a little like the start of a backstroke swimming race, Zhang says. Males hold the tips of their front legs against a female’s body. The spiders then use hydraulic pressure to extend a joint in those legs, quickly launching a male off a female before she can capture and eat him. Of 155 successful mating rituals that the researchers observed, 152 males catapulted to survival. The remaining three that didn’t fell victim to their partner. Female spiders also ate all 30 males that the team stopped from jumping to freedom with a paintbrush.
These male orb weavers probably acquired their jumping abilities to counter females’ cannibalistic tendencies, Zhang says. articles, delivered to your inbox
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