Mating is a dance of death for spiders

TO ATTRACT a mate, male wolf spiders wave their front legs in a display that, unfortunately for them, also attracts the attention of predators. Now it seems the risky nature of this manoevre might be the very reason females find the behaviour so irresistible, as the strongest males are able to withstand the dangers of a flamboyant courtship.

Chad Hoefler from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, starved one group of male spiders and let a second group gorge on crickets. He then filmed how they fared in a series of trials…