Some male spiders tie up females before mating to avoid being eaten

Many male spiders engage in courtship rituals during mating, but some attack females instead and tie them up to avoid being eaten.

“Spiders sometimes spend hours luring females to court them, but these guys just go and bite,” says Lenka Sentenská at the University of Toronto Scarborough, Canada.

Running crab spiders, a group containing more than 600 species, are found widely across Europe, Asia and Africa. In April 2019, while working at Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic, Sentenská was studying the behaviour of one species – Thanatus fabricii – that is native…