Male spiders produce sperm whose cell components are coiled within the sperm cell and that are surrounded by a proteinaceous sheath. These inactive and encapsulated sperm are transferred to the female spermathecae where they are stored for later fertilization.
Females are able to store that sperm for about a month within their bodies before fertilizing a clutch of around 200 eggs.
When most spiders mate, the male ejects sperm into the female's genital organs, and the sperm is then stored in a pouch called the spermatheca. She releases the sperm later to fertilize eggs in the uterus—so the last male to mate with her will most likely father her offspring.
Because of where they're located, they're “likely to able to directly perceive sensory input during sperm transfer,” the scientists write. That doesn't necessarily mean that the spiders are having sex for fun. Actually, if they feel anything at all, it could be as a way to up their game.
Although adult male spiders are like vertebrates in having a pair of abdominal testes, their genital apparatus only vaguely resembles that of a vertebrate.
Spiders do have feelings, but unlike a dog or a cat, they won't bond with you. In fact, they likely won't even recognize you. They simply aren't hardwired to be companions to humans and should never be bought at pet stores, online, or anywhere else.
Unlike most other invertebrates, spiders - like humans - have more centralised organs such as the heart and the brain.
The researchers found that the smaller the spider, the bigger its brain relative to its body size. In some spiders, the central nervous system took up nearly 80 percent of the space in their bodies, sometimes even spilling into their legs.
The female will then lay her eggs in Spring and within 30 days there will be lots of (not so) cute spider babies.
Dark fishing spiders are the first non-web-weaving spider in which obligatory death after mating has been observed, reports a team of scientists on June 19 in Biology Letters.
Male spiders do not lay eggs. However, there are hermaphroditic species in the animal world, which possess reproductive organs related to both sexes and can produce male and female gametes. Do male spiders carry eggs? No they don't.
Both the male and female reproductive organs are at the rear of the abdomen, but spiders don't mate by coupling these organs. Instead, the male deposits some sperm onto a small web and picks it up on the end of his pedipalps. When the female is in position, the male deposits the sperm in the female's genital opening.
In a grisly practice known as sexual cannibalism, females of many spider species devour their mates after procreation, either for sustenance or to keep their reproductive options open. Female spiders are usually much larger than their male counterparts and thus have a strong physical advantage.
Most spiders live about two years, but some have been known to live up to 20 years when in captivity. Female spiders tend to live longer than male spiders. Many male spiders reach maturity within two years and die after mating.
Female common house spiders (Parasteatoda tepidariorum) deposit as many as 250 eggs into a sac of silk. These sacs are often brown in color and are flask-like in shape. Females produce up to 17 of these sacs during a lifetime, resulting in more than 4,000 eggs.
The researchers mated 68 virgin P. globosus females with two males. They found that the number of squeezes the males made were associated with the number of times the females cried out during sex. Stridulations became more frequent if males failed to loosen a squeeze in response to a previous plea.
While some spiders catch prey with webs, others -- such as jumping spiders -- hunt using sharp eyesight. Because they don't have eardrums, scientists have always assumed that arachnids were deaf to airborne vibrations. But biologists at Cornell University have now shown that spiders can detect sounds after all.
Now scientists have found that spiders can hear you from across a room. The discovery came as a surprise because, technically, spiders do not have ears. However, the latest research shows that the hairs on spiders' legs are so sensitive that they can detect human speech from several metres away.
They don't feel 'pain,' but may feel irritation and probably can sense if they are damaged.
They found that not only did the spiders remember they caught something, but they also remembered features of the prey and the quantity of it. Memory in tiny creatures was long thought to be a hardwired behavior that didn't require much mental capacity.
While not usually considered paragons of tender, familial love, some spiders do have a touchy-feely side. Scientists have discovered two arachnids that caress their young and snuggle together.
Much can be learned from the building of the spider's gossamer net and the operation of its sticky trap. Amazingly, garden cross spiders can regenerate lost legs and use them immediately to build a web that is pitch-perfect, even though the new limb is much shorter than the one it replaced.
Sorry arachnophobes, you have more in common with spiders than you thought Although spiders are sometimes thought of as being creepy crawly animals, new evidence suggests some get scared and assess danger in almost the same way as humans.
A male seeks out a female in her web and then sort of moves in. He will walk around on her web, vibrating his legs on the web and giving brief vibratory touches to her with his legs when they meet. In some species he builds a special canopy in a corner of her web.
The nutrients gained when a female praying mantis eats her suitor benefit her offspring as they grow. Sexual cannibalism — when the female of a species consumes the male during or after mating — is also known among spiders, such as the black widow, and scorpions.