If I were a male mantis, celibacy would look like an extremely attractive
option.
Nathan Wajsman
Alicante, Spain
http://www.frozenlight.eu
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YNWA
On Jun 19, 2011, at 12:01 PM, Andrew Fildes wrote:
> 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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