Spiders play dead to get sex

Researchers from Denmark discovered that male spiders of a certain species pretend to be dead so that females will not be afraid to approach them. Only then do they attack the target

Males will do extreme things to get females, but turning themselves dead doesn't sound like a serious strategy. Some of the male spiders, known as the "nursery spider", frequently pretend to be dead, and in particular also to convince female spiders to have sex with them. A male spider that does not do this, will not get to pass their genes on to future generations.

The researcher Trin Belida from the University of Aarhus in Denmark and her colleagues caused encounters between males and females of this species (or by its scientific name Pisaura mirabilis). The males presented "gifts", in the form of food, to the potential females of the pair, and some of the males pretended to be dead as they stretched their bodies and remained motionless, while holding the gift in their mouths.

The females approached to take the food. Sometimes they had to drag the male a little. At this point the "dead" male comes back to life and maneuvers himself into a position for intercourse.

89% of the males who played themselves dead achieved the desired mating using this method, while only 40% of the males who did not adopt this imitation process succeeded in doing so. The males who played themselves dead had a longer mating time than the males who did not, and were therefore able to fertilize more eggs.

While feigning death is a defense against predators in many animals, its use as a strategy to obtain sex has not yet been observed in another animal. "It seems that anti-predator behavior has evolved into a reproductive strategy," Balda noted in her study. Evolution, as proven this time too, has its own laws.