A male black widow spider. (Image: K. Korlevic) 
 
 Male widow spiders often end up as a tasty meal for their partners after sex, but new research shows that some males are employing a rather unsettling strategy to prevent this from happening, and it’s a little bit twisted. 
 
 New research published in Biology Letters shows that a significant portion of male widow spiders copulate with immature females, who are still too young to capture and consume their mate. These females have functioning reproductive organs, but their genitals are still internal and protected by a tough shell. Undaunted, the males penetrate right through this exoskeleton to deposit sperm. The young females, apparently not worse for wear, produce the male’s offspring once they’ve matured. 
 
 
 
 Normally, mature female widow spiders engage in sexual cannibalism—an evolutionary strategy that improves a species’ reproductive fitness as a whole. But in this case, the male widow spiders, who are normally monogamous, have adopted a strategy that’s allowing them to have sexual liaisons with multiple partners. It’s a completely selfish act but also one that improves an individual male’s reproductive success. As the researchers from University of Toronto Scarborough point out, this tactic is changing the sexual preference of male widow spiders, and it has the potential to change the evolutionary trajectory of this normally cannibalistic species. 
 
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 To perform the dastardly deed on the immature female, the male uses its fangs to cut through the exoskeleton. He then very carefully deposits his seed in the female’s sperm receptacle, called spermatheca. As far as the researchers can tell, this isn’t causing any injury to the female. The male has to be precise about the timing, doing it just a few days before molting when the female’s genitalia and sperm storage organs are fully developed but not yet exposed. 
 
 Spider sex with minors isn’t a rare occurrence. When the researchers went out into the field to collect immature females, they found that one-third of them had been violated in this way. 
 
 This sexual tactic is clearly a “thing” among the species, but only time will tell if it will become more popular over time. Sexual cannibalism evolved for a reason, so this kind of sexual experimentation may be peaking. For now, it remains a fetish among a species already known for its extreme and violent sex acts. 
 
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 [Biology Letters] ||||| Photos via Flickr users budak and saechang 
 
 According to BBC Focus, the United Kingdom is the home to three spiders that may or may not be interested in biting you: the cellular spider, the woodlouse spider, and the false widow spiders. “Essentially none” of them are really dangerous, but why would anyone take that chance? We’re here for Demi Sweeney, a 22-year-old criminology student who decided that yes, it’s worth paying £13 ($17) to have food delivered, if it means that the driver might be willing to remove the probably-not-at-all-dangerous spider from the wall of your apartment. 
 
 Sweeney told Metro that she noticed the spider on her wall early in the morning and tried to deal with it herself. She Googled spider removal techniques but couldn’t bring herself to do any of them, and tried calling her friends who were all like, “Nah, hard pass.” One friend suggested that, if she Deliveroo-ed her lunch, she might be able to convince the driver to deal with it, so she wrote about the situation in the Delivery Notes section of her food order and explained the situation to customer service. 
 
 “I ordered a filet burger meal [from KFC] with popcorn chicken and Pepsi, but it didn’t make the £10 delivery charge and that’s the whole point I was ordering, so I added on a cookie and it came to £13,” she confessed. When the driver arrived, she confronted her fear long enough to run past the spider and down the stairs to let him in—and then she learned that he was afraid of spiders, too. 
 
 After some “begging,” dude walked upstairs with a handful of toilet paper, accidentally knocked the spider off the wall and onto the floor, and then eventually caught and disposed of it. “Joe, you are an actual LIFESAVER,” she tweeted afterwards. 
 
 Sweeney admitted that she was a longtime arachnophobe, and has suffered through bouts of insomnia because “[she] thought that spiders were in my room at all times.” Despite the fear, she says that her Deliveroo-branded spider catcher was probably a one-time thing, because there really aren’t too many reasons to spend $17 on one KFC meal. 
 
 “Another example of the younger generation lacking common sense and not being able to do anything without google,” one commenter sighed. “This world is doomed!!” 
 
 Not sure why Google is being dragged into this—except for answering the question “Can a spider bite me to death?” with related phrases like “brink of death” and pages of terrifying pictures that no one should look at under any circumstances. Uh… hi, Deliveroo? Can you please bring me some chicken korma and glue-gun me into a giant spider-proof box? I tip well.
– No one—but no one—likes to get killed for having sex, and as that is often the fate of male black widow spiders, the critters are evolving a mating tactic that is, anthropomorphically speaking, more than a little creepy. Researchers found a startling, and slightly unsettling, mating shift in a study titled "Copulation with immature females increases male fitness in cannibalistic widow spiders," published in Biology Letters and translated into English as "Dirty old men spiders avoid violent death, increase number of babymamas by chasing jailbait female spiders." Essentially, Gizmodo notes, the males of the species have noticed that they keep getting killed when mating with sexually mature females. But if they chase young spider-skirt, the immature females aren't capable of killing them. Here's how it works: The young females' reproductive organs are functional, but internal, and protected by an exoskeleton. The dirty old man spiders cut through the exoskeleton with their fangs, and leave a special sperm delivery in the female's sperm receptacle. It's a narrow window in her development, but when the female matures, she pops out the male's spider babies. Writes Gizmodo: "Spider sex with minors isn’t a rare occurrence. When the researchers went out into the field to collect immature females, they found that one-third of them had been violated in this way." It's an evolutionary win-win for the male, who is a) still alive, and b) free to go out and mate again, thereby increasing his progeny. (Here's a graphic description of what it's like to get bitten by a black widow. Hint: Not fun.)