Video: Male spiders play dead when they want to get laid
MALES will go to extreme lengths to get females, but playing dead might not seem like an obvious strategy. Some male nursery web spiders, however, regularly feign death, and those that do are more likely to mate.
Trine Bilde of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and colleagues set up encounters between male and female Pisaura mirabilis spiders. Males of the species present a food gift to prospective mates, with some males playing dead by stretching out their bodies and remaining motionless while holding the gift in their mouths. The female spider investigates and takes hold of the food gift, sometimes dragging the male around. At this point the 鈥渄ead鈥� male comes to life and manoeuvres into the copulation position. Eighty-nine per cent of males that played dead achieved copulation, whereas just 40 per cent of males that did not adopt this behaviour were successful (Behavioral Ecology, ). Males that played dead also enjoyed longer copulations than males that did not, and were thus able to fertilise more eggs.
While playing dead is an anti-predator defence in many animals, its use as a strategy to obtain sex has not been seen before. 鈥淭his apparent anti-predator behaviour has evolved into an adaptive mating strategy,鈥� says Bilde.
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