The female Mediterranean tarantulas eat their mate, but they rarely eat their first mate but the mate that comes after him faces up to triple the risk of being eaten. Proven by Moya- Laraño at least one third of the female spiders ate their suitor. By eating their suitors the female spiders had more babies and earlier than usually expected. When Moya researched fights between cannibals and non cannibals, the cannibals won because they became stronger and tougher. Chad Johnson of Arizona State University in Phoenix suggested that if spiders don't get a good meal or benefit from sexual cannibalism, maybe killing the suitors is a way of revenge. Moya Laraño says" That the Mediterranean tarantulas might have some spillover effect too".
This experiment is an example of hypothesis based science because they did experiments on the Mediterranean tarantulas such as the fight between non cannibals and cannibals and experimenting how many spiders eat their suitors. This article is very interesting because not everybody knows that animals such as tarantulas eat their suitors and get tougher and stronger.
author: Susan Milius
title of article: Cannibals have better babies
date published: November 22,2008
page: 14
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