[Rhodes22-list] Dead for Sex

[Robert Skinner]

Great!  Now we have necrophiliac spiders who 
copulate for a free meal.  Sounds like a 
little place I had the good sense to walk by 
in Tijuana...

/Robert

Brad Haslett wrote:
> 
> I'm thinking super-gluing a $100 bill to the forehead would be the spider
> equivilent.  Brad
> 
> ----------------------
> 
> Male spiders play dead for sex: study
> <http://www.breitbart.com/partner.php?source=afp>   Feb 27 09:34 AM
> US/Eastern
>    Advice on how to score with the ladies would probably never include the
> strategy that works best for at least one species of male spider: playing
> dead.
> 
> Not all male nursery web spiders looking for a little arachnid sex adopt
> this technique, but those that do more than double their chances of hitting
> the jackpot, according to new study in Behavioral Ecology, reported
> Wednesday in the British magazine New Scientist.
> 
> In experiments designed by Trine Bilde of the University of Aaarhus in
> Denmark, researchers set up date-and-mate opportunities for Pisaura
> mirabilis, a species native to Europe.
> 
> All the males sought to attract partners by offering a gift of food, held in
> the mouth.
> 
> But the ones that lay flat and motionless -- even if meant getting dragged
> about by a female that had latched onto the victuals -- wound up in a much
> better position, as it were, to engage in sexual activity.
> 
> The hapless males that tried the direct approach wound up keeping the free
> meal but not getting what they were really after.
> 
> Males that played dead were also allowed to copulate longer than males that
> did not, ensuring more eggs could fertilized, the researchers reported.
> 
> Playing dead is a well-known defence mechanism in nature, but this is
> apparently the first time such behaviour has been observed as a strategy for
> obtaining sexual favours.