It turned out exactly how female spiders deceive males for the sake of mating and eating

Female funnel web spiders behave strangely when mating: they play dead during contact

with males.A new study has found that this makes males less worried about being eaten when "the job is done." This, in turn, makes it easier for females to choose the best partners. By pretending to be dead, they attract suitable partners. If a male approaches them and they are not happy with it, they will be able to fight back by suddenly attacking.

It is known that the females of some funnel-web spiderspractice cannibalism after mating - they kill and eat partners after the “meeting”. Naturally, this makes any contact much less attractive to the males, who literally risk their lives every time they want to mate.

To solve the problem, some types of steelpractice sexual catalepsy - the female bends her legs and remains motionless, as if she were dead. This adds courage to intimidated males: they can calmly go about their business without worrying about becoming a post-mating snack.

Researchers knew about sexual catalepsyin spiders, but until now it was not clear whether females voluntarily immobilize themselves in the interests of males or whether males do it. Perhaps it's all about some kind of behavioral trigger or chemical signal.

To understand what's going on, researchersconducted experiments with spiders of the species Aterigena aculeata. They compared sexual catalepsy with similar behavior and found that females themselves control sexual catalepsy in order to choose their own mate. The results were published March 21 in the journal Current Zoology.

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On the cover: the spider Aterigena ligurica during an experiment
Image Credit: Andrea Pane; (CC BY-NC 4.0)