Video: Male spiders play dead when they want to get laid
MALES will go to extreme lengths to get females, but playing dead might not seem like an obvious strategy. Some male nursery web spiders, however, regularly feign death, and those that do are more likely to mate.
Trine Bilde of the University of Aarhus, Denmark, and colleagues set up encounters between male and female Pisaura mirabilis spiders. Males of the species present a food gift to prospective mates, with some males playing dead by stretching out their bodies and remaining motionless while holding the gift in their mouths.…
