According to reports, recently, Nathan Burke, an entomologist from Auckland, when studying the probability of male mantises being eaten during the mating process of female mantises and male mantises, found that the male mantises in the mantis actually evolved a special skill, which can prevent them from being eaten by female mantises when mating.
Why do female praying mantises choose to eat their husbands?
In many post-80s memories, "Black Cat Sheriff" must have a place, one of the unforgettable stories is: on the wedding night, the female mantis ate the male mantis, and what is even more surprising is that this is not a fictional story, because in nature, the female mantis does have this "eater" behavior.
In The Insect Chronicle (the world-renowned encyclopedia of insects), the author of the book, the famous French entomologist Fabre, also describes the habit of the female mantis "eater", saying that when mating is over, the female mantis will bite her husband's head and neck, and then eat her husband.
As for why the female praying mantis will choose to eat her husband, in short, it is an energy supplement, because after mating, the female praying mantis generally feels very hungry, and it also needs a lot of energy in order to breed offspring, if there is no food around the female praying mantis at this time, then it will be hungry to eat her husband.
Some time ago, foreign scientists have also done similar experiments, found that if the female mantis is in the case of eating and drinking enough, or there is "hand to hand" food around at any time, at this time, even if the mating is over, the male mantis can still retreat, this experiment also proves that the female mantis is indeed to supplement energy to kill the husband.
What is the probability that a male praying mantis will be eaten?
Nathan Burke, an entomologist in Oakland, said that through a large number of data, the probability of male mantises being eaten is about 60%, which also makes these male mantises need to make up their minds to "gamble" their luck before mating, after all, they do not know whether the female mantis they choose is full of food and drink before mating.
Nathan Burke introduced that he found that some male mantises began to use some violent means to subdue female mantises before mating, in order to protect themselves, so that female mantises would be willing to mate, and because they lost before mating, they naturally did not dare to eat their husbands.
The researchers conducted a total of 52 pairs of mantis experiments, and the results showed that the male mantis that won the battle can often say goodbye to their fate of being eaten after mating, and the success rate is about 78%, obviously, the probability of success in a desperate fight is higher than the success rate of unprepared fate.
Researchers say that in nature, praying mantises are not unique, because this kind of situation that eats their mates is very common in the insect world, and next, let's take a look at which other animals are the same as mantises.
What other animals will eat their mates?
According to the researchers, in addition to the praying mantis, there is another famous species that eats its husband, that is, the red-backed spider that lives in Australia. This spider, like the praying mantis, is also mating at the time, if the female spider is very hungry, then it will eat her husband.
However, unlike mantises, researchers have found that male mantises are often unwilling, reluctant, and try their best to escape the fate of being eaten, while male red-backed spiders are willing, because if they are eaten as food for females, then the number of their offspring will increase by about 40%.
As early as 1998, scientists began to study this strange and terrible behavior in nature, and like praying mantises, the probability of male red-backed spiders being eaten is about 65%, and the remaining 35% of male red-backed spiders that have not been eaten will also make lure moves in order to let females eat themselves.
This is because if the female red-backed spider begins to eat her husband during the mating process, then the entire mating process will be greatly prolonged, so that the mating organs of the male red-backed spider will remain in the female red-backed spider's body, preventing other male red-backed spiders from coming forward to seek pleasure, and at the same time, because the mating time becomes longer, the female red-backed spider can also produce more eggs.
In addition to praying mantises and red-backed spiders, there are many species that have similar situations, such as one of the oldest surviving species on Earth, the scorpion, in the past 400 million years, from their birth to the present, every time they mate, there is a high probability that the male will be eaten by the female.
In addition, there are many cannibalistic animals in nature, or this phenomenon is very common, including gorillas, and male gorilla leaders will eat the offspring of the previous leader to prevent them from retaliating against themselves later. What other animals do you know that have similar situations? Welcome to leave a message and share it with us!
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sciencealert——《Male Mantises Evolved a Vital Trick to Avoid Being Decapitated After Sex》01-21