Sound Production in Mating Rituals
Males of Heteropoda venatoria, one of the huntsman spiders that seems to easily find its way around the world, have recently been found to deliberately make a substrate-borne sound when they detect a chemical (pheromone) left by a nearby female of their species. The males anchor themselves firmly to the surface onto which they have crawled and then use their legs to transmit vibrations from their bodies to the surface. Most of the sound emitted is produced by strong vibrations of the abdomen. The characteristic frequency of vibration and the pattern of bursts of sound identify them to females of their species, who will approach if they are interested in mating.
Read more about this topic: Huntsman Spider
Famous quotes containing the words sound, production, mating and/or rituals:
“Like many of the Upper Class He liked the Sound of Broken Glass.”
—Hilaire Belloc (18701953)
“... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not do without that life.”
—Emma Goldman (18691940)
“Hes one of those know-it-all types that, if you flatter the wig off him, he chatter like a goony bird at mating time.”
—Michael Blankfort. Lewis Milestone. Johnson (Reginald Gardner)
“Liberation is an evershifting horizon, a total ideology that can never fulfill its promises.... It has the therapeutic quality of providing emotionally charged rituals of solidarity in hatredit is the amphetamine of its believers.”
—Arianna Stassinopoulos (b. 1950)