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] ||||| Black widows are notorious spiders identified by the colored, hourglass-shaped mark on their abdomens. Several species answer to the name, and they are found in temperate regions around the world. 
 
 Venom 
 
 This spider's bite is much feared because its venom is reported to be 15 times stronger than a rattlesnake's. In humans, bites produce muscle aches, nausea, and a paralysis of the diaphragm that can make breathing difficult; however, contrary to popular belief, most people who are bitten suffer no serious damage—let alone death. But bites can be fatal—usually to small children, the elderly, or the infirm. Fortunately, fatalities are fairly rare; the spiders are nonaggressive and bite only in self-defense, such as when someone accidentally sits on them. 
 
 The animals most at risk from the black widow's bite are insects—and male black widow spiders. Females sometimes kill and eat their counterparts after mating in a macabre behavior that gave the insect its name. Black widows are solitary year-round except during this violent mating ritual. 
 
 Webs and Feeding 
 
 These spiders spin large webs in which females suspend a cocoon with hundreds of eggs. Spiderlings disperse soon after they leave their eggs, but the web remains. Black widow spiders also use their webs to ensnare their prey, which consists of flies, mosquitoes, grasshoppers, beetles, and caterpillars. Black widows are comb-footed spiders, which means they have bristles on their hind legs that they use to cover their prey with silk once it has been trapped. 
 
 To feed, black widows puncture their insect prey with their fangs and administer digestive enzymes to the corpses. By using these enzymes, and their gnashing fangs, the spiders liquefy their prey's bodies and suck up the resulting fluid.
– 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.)