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Male jumping spiders 'sing and dance' to charm potential mates to be eaten alive later by female

By Mharia Emmareen | Apr 07, 2017 10:35 AM EDT
A large male Thiodina sylvana about to leap on the photographer's camera lens.
(Photo : Wikimedia Commons/Thomas Shahan)

The impulsive male jumping spiders will attempt to mate any female spider regardless of its species. Due to the inability of identifying the supposed mate, these male arachnids usually end as the female spiders' meal.

The UF/IFAS entomologist Lisa Taylor together with her team recorded the courting practices of male jumping spiders. They discovered that a great deal of time and effort is spent which include dancing and singing in attempting to mate a possible female even of the wrong species, based on the recently published study.

Taylor stated, "We think that one reason these displays have evolved in male jumping spiders is to compensate for the fact that they can't tell females of closely related species apart. Males run around courting everything that looks remotely like a female, and they place themselves at a very high risk of cannibalism from hungry females of the wrong species who have no interest in mating with them."

As reported by Science Daily, Phoenix, Arizona served as the searching ground for spiders which frequent the river shores. The found specimen was observed and then documented everything it accomplished via voice recorder. If it's a male, they kept an eye on how many females it encountered and tried to court. If it's a female, they recorded the number of males and what kind of species courted it. In addition, it was recorded as well if the male spiders have been assailed or devoured by the female spiders.

To sum it up, at least more than 500 various types of jumping spiders and approximately 5,000 species comprise the Arachnid family. This type of spider could leap up to 50 times its mass by using silk tether secreted from their bodies. It uses its limbs for the hydraulic movement despite the fact it has no muscles in its body that will enable it to jump, according to SpidersWorlds.

Several species of female jumping spiders look just the same and male ones have a hard time differentiating them from other species. This is the reason why the female spiders are the ones who decide the fate of the males - to be eaten or not.

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