Spiders suffer from extreme gender dimorphism - the male is tiny and looks
nothing like the female. Consequently, if he makes one tiny mistake in his
nervous courtship approach, she decides that he's probably lunch.
Mantises are much stranger. She turns and bites through his neck during
copulation, decapitating him. The violent nervous shock causes him to
ejaculate. It's a neat adaptation because it means that once he's done his job,
the now useless male is no longer around to compete for food. If she then eats
the corpse it's nothing personal, just a confirmation that she isn't
sentimental and that his remains are...convenient.
Andrew Fildes
afildes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
On 19/06/2011, at 6:16 PM, Chris Crawford wrote:
> You're thinking of Spiders. Flies don't eat other bugs (which includes their
> mates). Spiders will eat each other; black widow females are infamous for
> it, but a lot of other female spiders also eat their mates. In the insect
> world, I think that female praying mantises also sometimes eat the males.
--
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