Sperm piracy, virgin births, incest and stabbings. No, not a synopsis of the new Game Of Thrones episode, but a taster into the lives of kinky insects.
Imagine if female humans not only had child birth to contend with, but also getting stabbed everytime they wanted to have sex.
Not content on being bloodsucking parasites that feast on you whilst you sleep, male bedbugs have dagger-like genitals. When they find a desirable female they use their sharpened penis to stab them and then inject their sperm into the fresh gash (at least they don’t mug them too.) Post-stabbing the sperm is then carried via the bloodstream to the ovaries where it can fertilise an egg.
This means that the penis doesn’t even need to penetrate a vagina. A female can be penis-knifed in the face and become pregnant. For once scientists haven’t tried to hide the horrific nature of something with innocuous sounding terminology. This process is known as ‘Traumatic Insemination.’
Females can have multiple ‘mating scars’ all over their body. The open wounds are at risk from infection and energy required to heal also contributes to reducing the female’s life span. So why did this evolve? Some animals and insects will plug the female genitalia after intercourse thereby blocking the way and preventing others from mating. Stabbing to create an opening anywhere on the body circumvents this.
Before you get into your warm comfy bed tonight consider that it might be the knife crime capital of the world.
We usually think of lavish silk gifts as items proffered by romantic or guilty humans, but amorous nursery spiders also exchange the same commodity. Unfortunately for the lady spiders the gift is often a nefarious fake that serves as a distraction device whilst the man uses the opportunity to pounce and have his wicked way.
Males that are too stingy to arrive bearing gifts risk a higher chance of rejection. Only one in six spiders that enter the boudoir empty handed get what they…ahem came for. The time those lucky few are permitted to copulate is also reduced compared to the slick and smooth spiders that went shopping.
Nursery spiders don’t build webs to catch their prey. Instead they have to go out hunting for food. They also use this time to scour for something to give to a potential mate. Researchers found that 62% of offerings were delectable live prey. The remaining 38%? Duplicitous presents that failed to deliver on promises. Items such as flimsy pieces of cotton or rotting leaves that are useless. The men are cunning though. They wrap their worthless gifts tightly up in silk to resonate an aura of luxury.
Whilst the females excitedly rush to open their presents the men take them by surprise and commence fornication. In observations their heinous schemes worked nine times out of ten which was almost the same success rate as those who hadn’t scrimped on their package.
http://www.livescience.com/17010-spider-gifts-play-dead-mating.html
http://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2013/11/05/spiders_exchange_gifts_for_sex_106747.html
