Name: The Secrets of Spider Seduction
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Nova

Can scientists stomach hours of spider sex in order to understand their language?

The Secrets of Spider Seduction

Secrets of Spider Seduction

the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation

The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation

The John Templeton Foundation

The National Science Foundation

The Secrets of Spider SeductionDAMIAN ELIAS: Oh, my god, I've probably spent tens of thousands of hours watching spiders have sex and hearing spiders have sex and thinking about spiders having sex. So, he increases the thumps as he gets closer. Now he is really inching up closer.DAMIAN ELIAS: Spiders don't have ears, and so they can't detect airborne sound. Instead, spiders detect vibrations with their feet.DAMIAN ELIAS: So, he's doing a sidling display, there. They're really exposing a lot of the ornaments that they have on their face. And those oftentimes are species-specific. Females need to know that it isn't a predator that's trying to eat them.TALITHIA WILLIAMS: Now, the "singing" kicks in.DAMIAN ELIAS: There. There is the introductory display. Essentially, it's like, you know, "Listen to this: now I'm going to start to tell you a bunch of information about myself."And so now he's going to go through a series of different signals.TALITHIA WILLIAMS: First the scrape.DAMIAN ELIAS: Right there; that's a scrape. TALITHIA WILLIAMS: By counting the parasites on over a hundred spiders, Damian found that the louder the scrape, the fewer the parasites.DAMIAN ELIAS: So, what they're telling the female is, "I'm healthy, I'm free of parasites."TALITHIA WILLIAMS: Next, the thump…DAMIAN ELIAS: The thumps are probably to kind of make sure to maintain the female's attention.TALITHIA WILLIAMS: And once they've snagged that, time to put on the moves.DAMIAN ELIAS: So, the third leg displays serve to draw attention to these ornaments that are on the third legs, and they kind of like shake them around.TALITHIA WILLIAMS: And depending on how bright they are, Damian thinks that these tell the female about his past.DAMIAN ELIAS: And we have buzzes, these long tonal signals that inform the female about the male's size. So, the louder it is, the deeper it is, the more the female wants them.DAMIAN ELIAS: You can see that the female, now, is just, like, really looking at the male, really looking at what he's trying to do.TALITHIA WILLIAMS: For the guy, the stakes are high. They aren't just singing for their supper, they're singing to make sure they don't become supper.DAMIAN ELIAS: When females are assessing males, they're deciding on whether they're a potential mate or whether a potential meal.So, right now that he is buzzing, so he's getting really close, so he's really going to, kind of like wrapping up, trying to get this female to mate with him. Now he's really in the dangerous parts of the display. So, it's getting faster and faster, now he's going to make a copulation attempt.Oh, the female right there said, "No way."It's hard not to sort of feel sorry for that male. And it's especially the case if the male is really trying his heart out, and he gets eaten. Then I just feel absolutely terrible.

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