Funnel-Web-Weaver Spiders Mating
There was a large funnel-shaped spider web under the eaves of our front porch through late summer of 2011, inhabited by a large female spider. And then, on September 10, we spotted this fellow sauntering jauntily onto the edges of the web.
He was looking for a little love. And danger. Male spiders live for danger.
And then, he spotted her, and she spotted him[1]. And they both knew that this was it. He then became very cautious. Understandably so – she was easily twice his size, and if he startled or annoyed her, there’d be no second chances. No apologies with a bouquet of flies. One slip, and she’d kill him quick as a wink [2].
She just waited, nerves on edge. This was pretty scary for her, too. Sure, it looked like a handsome fellow spider coming up to her, but she couldn’t see so well. For all she knew, this was something dangerous. Maybe a predatory wasp, or an assassin bug, or something else nearly as mean as herself.
She actually did panic and hide at one point, I think it might have been because I brushed the web with my camera lens.
The male’s approach was agonizingly slow. It took him over an hour to cover the last inch.
Then, finally, they made contact! It’s a bit hard to see here, what with all the webbing in the way, but she reared back to expose her underside to him.
Since this took so long, and there was so much webbing in the way, we didn’t actually see the final moment, when he stuck his palpi in her epigyne, and ran off![3]
Here she is afterwards, heading back to her lair, all fertilized and ready to lay eggs. There’s no sign of the male’s body, so I assume that he got away clean, to try to find and seduce another female. He probably kept it up until his luck ran out, and one of his ladyloves killed and ate him[4].
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[1] I apologize for the difficulty in seeing anything in the pictures after this point. There was quite a lot of webbing in the way, and no accessible vantage point where I could see clearly around the webs. Well, it’s probably best to allow them some semblance of privacy, anyway.
[2] Back in 2010, when we had this spider in an aquarium, I found a male spider at work that I thought was the same species. So I caught him, and carefully introduced him to her cage. At which point she immediately pounced on him and murdered him, without even the slightest hesitation. This is what could have happened to the male in this posting if things had gone bad for him.
[3] Yes, I know I already linked to Rossellini’s spider mating re-enactment video back about a year ago. But it was too appropriate for this particular posting to pass up.
[4] Eventually, he was bound to run across a female who had already mated, and would therefore have no need for, or interest in, him except as an additional source of nourishment for her developing eggs.
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I wonder if the males can tell if the females have already mated. Maybe that’s what the little guy was trying to ascertain as he crept up on her for an hour.
Is she fat with eggs or just fat from food? I found one in our yard who looks like this and I thought for sure she was ready to lay some eggs. I fed her a moth which she promptly took back into her hidey-hole. The way she was wrapping it up reminded me of how tarantulas will turn around and around laying silk even though they don’t wrap their food.
Great post! I’ll have to add “getting to view spider romance” to my bucket list.
Really what Harlequin romance writer could do better than this for sizzle? I like the bit about the “bouquet of flies” –I feel that you would do well in advertising–writing political blurbs for say the Progressive Conservative Party of Alberta.
You lost a bit of the romantic edge though when you said “something nearly as mean as herself” –Harlequin romance females are never mean. They are ninnies, they are always innocent, even though they are sufficiently hard as nails practical enough to retain their virginity until the male is sufficiently overtaken by passion to marry the cunning creatures.
The tender moment of pre-contact is nicely done, and then the hazy contact itself was perfect –at least for an older Harlequin romance.
The newer romances give us extreme detail of the sort you so politely excluded so that the mating pair could get down to business in privacy and yet, leave us with something to mull over in our heads (Such as why even bother to mate if you can get eaten? But then who knows why the male of any species is so bent on reproduction? And why keep on in this way—- risking your life in order to pass on your genetic complement? Surely there are better ways to pass your time?)
As for the male escaping –how do you know he made it? Did you see him gallop off? How do you know she didn’t snack on him right away? Maybe she was so overcome with the romance of it all that she had to have him entire and nothing was left.
It is sad to think that this poor male spider is going to be eaten sooner or later—when all he is doing is wooing and romancing, but there you go. Every Lothario eventually meets his match one day and who is to say that the female spider hasn’t got the right trap to keep a male spider faithful to her—even if she has to eat him to make sure that he stays committed.
Next time could you put up a picture of the female spider snacking on the male? I like these sorts of bloodthirsty pictures even if I am a delicate sort myself and would not voluntarily —be in the vicinity of these beasts.
KT: I’m pretty sure the only indication the male gets as to whether she has already mated or not, is her reaction to his approach. Which certainly would explain why he would spend an hour or more approaching her.
JennyW: At this point, I think she’s big with unfertilized eggs. Other spiders that I’ve seen before and after laying eggs get quite a lot smaller in the process.
Carole: Glad to help with the bucket list!
Julie Ali: My main evidence that he got away, is that she wasn’t still sucking the juices out of his slowly deflating corpse when I came back for that last picture. A meal the size of him should have taken her a couple of hours to finish, because it would take time for her digestive juices to liquefy his insides. Believe me, if I’d found her eating him, you would have gotten to see the picture!
An hour of spider foreplay. Awesome!
Fantastic!! And sexy…. Thank you again for your great photos and natural history.