I didn’t tell you the whole story about our local Argiope. In fact, I cropped the photo I used by a lot — I left out that spider’s consort. Here’s the whole thing.
The female is on the right, that smaller, more gracile spider on the left is a male.
The thing about nephilid mating is that when the male gets lucky, one of the last things he does, once he gets his palp into the female epigyne, is to snap it off — that is, he voluntarily castrates himself and leaves the organ inside her. It acts as block to further mating by other males.
In addition, he builds a web very close to the female’s, and stations himself there to deter any males that might wander along and try courting her. That little guy in the left corner is a eunuch guard!
I know, that sounds creepy and stalkerish, and as I always tell people, the naturalistic fallacy is a fallacy, so don’t take this as an example. Maybe Dolomedes is a more attractive role model: the males don’t do the eunuch guardian thing at all, they just up and die on the spot as soon as they achieve copulation, and leave their lifeless corpse dangling from the female’s nether bits until it falls off. Carrying around the dead body of former partner’s is an excellent way to get other males to leave you alone.
I don’t recommend that for human women, either. It would work, though!
However bad it was with humans, the Ashley Madison scandal would have been an outright horror show with spiders.
Forgive my crudeness, but that’s what I call “cockblocking.” Literally!
It looks like her prey is another Argiope. Possibly another male?
But what about gay spiders?
[I blame you, marcoli ;) ]
Lugging around a human corpse is a lot harder and messier than lugging around a spider’s deceased remains – NOT that I know from experience I’ll hasten to add!
There’s also the sexual dimorphism factor which is reversed in humans vs arachnids albeit to a lesser degree for our mammalian species as opposed to the more dramatic arachnoidal difference..
Oh and the legal questions it would raise too given laws against desecration of corpses, messing up of carpets, etc ..
I do wonder about the issue of potential diseases and hygenic implications of leaving the decomposing corpse and broken off genitalia attached or very nearby tho’..
I’m struck by how they make their eight legs look like four by holding them in pairs. I haven’t seen that before.
So Mr. Spider gets a nice little apartment out back, and gets to see his brood grow up. Considering that some female spiders are reputed to eat their mates at the end of the tryst, this seems like a pretty tame alternative.
I notice that this fellow is not comparatively as small as some, and wonder if that helps. I met some impressive golden orb weavers in Madagascar last year, and was told that the males, tiny by comparison to the matriarchs, have to be unusually fast to avoid giving their all for the species.
“ Carrying around the dead body of former partner’s [sic] is an excellent way to get other males to leave you alone.”
The mystery of ‘Joanna the mad’ is finally resolved.