Image: Flickr/EOL Learning and Education Group
Darwin’s bark spiders are hands down the best spiders: they make giant webs that can span 25-meter-wide rivers, their silk is one of the strongest materials known to man, and, according to this study, male Darwin’s bark spiders give their mates oral sex. That is, if you define oral sex as “salivat[ing] onto female genitalia pre-, during, and post-copulation.” I know I do.
Spider behaviors include oral sexual encounters. “Several clades of spiders whose females evolved giant sizes are known for extreme sexual behaviors such as sexual cannibalism, opportunistic mating, mate-binding, genital mutilation, plugging, and emasculation. However, these behaviors have only been tested in a handful of size dimorphic spiders. Here, we bring another lineage into the picture by reporting on sexual behavior of Darwin’s bark spider, Caerostris darwini. This sexually size dimorphic Madagascan species is known for extreme web gigantism and for producing ...
