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March 15, 2016 / 11:40 AM
/ Livescience.com

Tying up your lover is one way to introduce a little excitement to the bedroom. But for male nursery-web spiders , bondage during mating can be a matter of life and death. By restraining their partners, male spiders reduce their chances of falling victim to sexual cannibalism, a new study finds.
Nursery-web spiders ( Pisaurina mira ) are long-limbed hunters that catch and overpower their prey. Though the females' bodies can be a bit larger than males', measuring about 0.5 to 0.7 inches (12 to 17 millimeters) in length, researchers noted that males' legs were longer than females', relative to their body size.
Prior studies described the male spider's unusual mating behavior -- wrapping silk around the female's legs before and during copulation -- and the scientists wondered if longer legs would help males restrain their hungry mates, leaving the guys more likely to survive cannibalism sparked during the throes of passion. [ Animal Sex: 7 Tales of Naughty Acts in the Wild ]
In some insect and spider species, sex can be a deadly roll of the dice for males, carrying the possibility that their female partners may suddenly identify them as a convenient postcoital snack. While this is understandably not an ideal outcome for males, cannibalizing is "quite beneficial for the female," said Alissa Anderson, who co-authored the study.
Anderson, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, told Live Science in an email that to a just-fertilized female with eggs to nourish, her mate's immediate value transforms from sex partner into "resources for her developing offspring" -- like a Happy Meal with legs. In another spider species, Anderson and her colleagues explained in the study, when a female consumes the male after mating, it leads to more offspring and increases the little spiders' weight and chances for survival.
And it's the conflict between these two competing desires -- the female's urgent need for sustenance and the male's need to not die -- that can lead to unusual sexual-survival strategies, Anderson said.
According to the researchers, in one spider species that practices sexual cannibalism, the males will play dead to keep from being eaten. In other species, males sedate the females into unconsciousness, while the males of still other species seek out and mate with females that are busy cannibalizing their earlier sex partners.
Or, like the nursery-web spider, males will bind the females' legs securely in the pursuit of safer sex.
Silk serves several purposes for nursery-web spiders, though the arachnids don't spin webs to catch prey. Females build "nursery webs" that hold newly hatched and developing spiderlings, while both males and females produce strands of silk that may be used like lifelines to help the critters swing to safety if they fall or are threatened.
And during mating, the males loop silk strands around the females' legs. Other spiders may drape their mates with silk, but these nursery-web spiders are the only male spiders that use their silk to physically restrain females, Anderson told Live Science.
To study this, the researchers paired male and female spiders, with some of the males able to spin protective strands and some inhibited from spinning. The males that couldn't restrain females were able to mate nearly as much as males that could bind their partners. But the unprotected males were also much more likely to be eaten afterward, the researchers reported.
Longer-legged male spiders that had larger bodies were the most successful at wrapping up their partners, and the most likely to walk away after mating, the researchers found. Restraining the females also allowed males to achieve "more insertions," the scientists noted, which is known in other spider species to increase the chances of successful fertilization.
Because longer legs could help the males manipulate their silk to more effectively bind the females, this would likely be a sexually selected trait, the study concluded.
The findings were published online Feb. 23 in the journal Biology Letters .
Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitter and Google+ . Follow us @livescience , Facebook & Google+ . Original article on Live Science .

First published on March 15, 2016 / 11:40 AM

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Tying up your lover is one way to introduce a little excitement to the bedroom. But for male nursery-web spiders, bondage during mating can be a matter of life and death. By restraining their partners, male spiders reduce their chances of falling victim to sexual cannibalism, a new study finds.
Nursery-web spiders ( Pisaurina mira ) are long-limbed hunters that catch and overpower their prey. Though the females' bodies can be a bit larger than males', measuring about 0.5 to 0.7 inches (12 to 17 millimeters) in length, researchers noted that males' legs were longer than females', relative to their body size.
Prior studies described the male spider's unusual mating behavior — wrapping silk around the female's legs before and during copulation — and the scientists wondered if longer legs would help males restrain their hungry mates, leaving the guys more likely to survive cannibalism sparked during the throes of passion. [ Animal Sex: 7 Tales of Naughty Acts in the Wild ]
In some insect and spider species, sex can be a deadly roll of the dice for males, carrying the possibility that their female partners may suddenly identify them as a convenient postcoital snack. While this is understandably not an ideal outcome for males, cannibalizing is "quite beneficial for the female," said Alissa Anderson, who co-authored the study.
Anderson, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, told Live Science in an email that to a just-fertilized female with eggs to nourish, her mate's immediate value transforms from sex partner into "resources for her developing offspring" — like a Happy Meal with legs. In another spider species, Anderson and her colleagues explained in the study, when a female consumes the male after mating, it leads to more offspring and increases the little spiders' weight and chances for survival.
And it's the conflict between these two competing desires — the female's urgent need for sustenance and the male's need to not die — that can lead to unusual sexual-survival strategies, Anderson said.
According to the researchers, in one spider species that practices sexual cannibalism, the males will play dead to keep from being eaten. In other species, males sedate the females into unconsciousness, while the males of still other species seek out and mate with females that are busy cannibalizing their earlier sex partners.
Or, like the nursery-web spider, males will bind the females' legs securely in the pursuit of safer sex.
Silk serves several purposes for nursery-web spiders, though the arachnids don't spin webs to catch prey. Females build "nursery webs" that hold newly hatched and developing spiderlings, while both males and females produce strands of silk that may be used like lifelines to help the critters swing to safety if they fall or are threatened.
And during mating, the males loop silk strands around the females' legs. Other spiders may drape their mates with silk, but these nursery-web spiders are the only male spiders that use their silk to physically restrain females, Anderson told Live Science.
To study this, the researchers paired male and female spiders, with some of the males able to spin protective strands and some inhibited from spinning. The males that couldn't restrain females were able to mate nearly as much as males that could bind their partners. But the unprotected males were also much more likely to be eaten afterward, the researchers reported.
Longer-legged male spiders that had larger bodies were the most successful at wrapping up their partners, and the most likely to walk away after mating, the researchers found. Restraining the females also allowed males to achieve "more insertions," the scientists noted, which is known in other spider species to increase the chances of successful fertilization.
Because longer legs could help the males manipulate their silk to more effectively bind the females, this would likely be a sexually selected trait, the study concluded.
The findings were published online today (Feb. 23) in the journal Biology Letters .
Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitter and Google+ . Follow us @livescience , Facebook & Google+ . Original article on Live Science .
Mindy Weisberger is a Live Science senior writer covering a general beat that includes climate change, paleontology, weird animal behavior, and space. Mindy holds an M.F.A. in Film from Columbia University; prior to Live Science she produced, wrote and directed media for the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Her videos about dinosaurs, astrophysics, biodiversity and evolution appear in museums and science centers worldwide, earning awards such as the CINE Golden Eagle and the Communicator Award of Excellence. Her writing has also appeared in Scientific American, The Washington Post and How It Works Magazine.
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Published: 13:16 BST, 1 March 2017 | Updated: 13:39 BST, 1 March 2017
Threesomes are a tricky business - especially if you're a male wolf spider.
The spiders' kinky three-way sex can go on for as long as four hours and the third wheel waits for the other male to woo the female before he joins in.
These unholy unions are believed to be an evolutionary advantage for the male spider as it reduces the chance of him getting eaten alive by the bloodthirsty female.
Matthew Persons, a professor of biology and ecology at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania said that threesomes have an evolutionary advantage for the 'third wheeling' male wolf spider
By joining a mating pair the third wheel avoids wasting energy on wooing the female.
Courtship also makes spiders vulnerable to predators.
If a female takes a disliking to the male she can cannibalise them before even having sex.
Even after mating, if she's left unimpressed she's eat her suitor.
By joining an already mating pair, the third wheel is reducing the likelihood of getting eaten by both the female and another predator.
However, threesomes mean copulation is less successful as the males find it harder to inseminate the female.
The 24-legged threesome was first spotted by a professor of biology and ecology at Susquehanna University in Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania.
Matthew Persons noticed the wolf spider ménage à trois in his back garden and took them onto his dining room table to find out exactly what was happening.
'Because they were in my yard, I scooped them up and brought them onto my dining room table and proceeded to take photos and document their positions for the next four hours', Dr Persons told Live Science .
The threesomes involve one female and two males - which is made possible because the female has paired reproductive organs.
Normally wolf spiders mate for 25 minutes to an hour, but threesomes go on for as long as four hours.
'The longer the mating duration, the higher the probability that they get eaten afterwards,' Dr Persons said.
Dr Persons' findings are the first case on record of wolf spiders (Rabidosa punctulata) have three-way sex.
This may have an evolutionary advantage for male wolf spiders because s ex is a dangerous business.
Female wolf spiders are likely to cannibalise their suitor if they're unimpressed by their courtship.
Dr Persons' findings are the first case on record of wolf spiders (Rabidosa punctulata) have three-way sex
This may have an evolutionary advantage for male wolf spiders because s ex is a dangerous business. Males often fight each other while trying to attract females but they won't fight if one is already having sex with her
By joining an already mating pair, the third wheel is reducing the likelihood of getting eaten by both the female and another predator.
According to Dr Persons, the third wheel also avoids wasting valuable energy on courting the female - they let the other male do the hard work so they don't have to.
Males often fight each other while trying to attract females but they won't fight if one is already having sex with her.
The threesomes involve one female and two males - which is made possible because the female has paired reproductive organ
Dr Persons saw one male spider lose a leg during mating, although he was not sure if it was the female or the other male who was responsible
However, in terms of sealing the deal, threesomes are not the answer.
'In my direct observations, males showed … sparring, missed insertions, attempts at … insertions into the other male's venter [underside] and attempts to displace the other male during insemination,' Dr Persons said in his study.
Dr Persons saw one male spider lose a leg during mating, although he was not sure if it was the female or the other male who was responsible.
The findings will be published in a forthcoming issue of the Journal of Arachnology .
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Spiders are everywhere, and if you're an arachnophobe, chances are you're not too thrilled to hear that. There are more than 45,000 known species of spiders in the world, and they can be found on every continent except Antarctica.
Most spiders have four pairs of eyes and, of course, their characteristic 8 legs, which make them easy to spot. But, spiders come in all shapes and sizes, and many have some unusual features that set them apart, whether it's their web-spinning abilities, what they like to eat or their strange mating habits.
Here are nine of the most bizarre spiders in the world.
Spiders famously dine on flies, but there are actually quite a few that prefer a heftier meal. According to researchers, bat-eating spiders can be found all over the world , but around 90 percent of them live in warmer climates. A common bat-killer is the Nephila pilipes spider, or Giant Golden Orb Weaver, which regularly catches bats in its web. These spiders can be found in many countries, including Australia, Japan and India. And females of this species can grow up to 8 inches (20 centimeters) long — much larger than the males.
The creature that is believed to be the largest spider in the world is quite rightly called the South American Goliath birdeater (Theraphosa blondi) from Guyana. This mammoth spider's leg span can reach nearly 12 inches (30 cm), or about the size of a child's forearm, and can weigh about the same as a puppy, scientists have said. You would probably hear this monster coming, as researchers have described the clicking noise its
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