Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Male Spiders May Want Their Partner To Eat Them, Israeli Scientists Say

Male brown widow spiders seek to mate with older females — and it’s no coincidence that those females are 50 perfect more likely to eat them after sex, Israeli researchers have found.

“We originally thought the males would prefer the sub-adult females, as they are more fertile and far less likely to cannibalize them, but we were surprised to discover that was not the case,” the researchers, who came from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and The Volcani Center in Israel said.

To understand the spiders’ mating preferences, the researchers collected male and female brown widow spiders from central and southern Israel and then positioned the females to give the males the choice of which to approach while they observed the interactions.

“Males don’t seem to be behaving in their own self-interest and suffer a twofold cost – fewer offspring and no opportunity to mate with another female,” the researchers said. “One possible explanation is that older females are manipulating the males by using strong signals to attract them, a hypothesis that remains to be tested.”

Contact Haley Cohen at [email protected]

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.