Males Eating Females
Reversing the traditional roles, species that have males consuming females are relatively unknown; the few that do show a male-biased sexual dimorphism. Examples include Allocosa brasiliensis, Evarcha culicivora, and Argyronetia aquatica. Male water spiders, Argyronetia aquatica, show a predilection for mating with larger females, while cannibalizing females smaller than themselves.
As is the case with Allocosa brasiliensis, males cull older females who are less fertile than their young counterparts.
Read more about this topic: Spider Cannibalism
Famous quotes containing the words males, eating and/or females:
“If combat means living in a ditch, females have biological problems staying in a ditch for 30 days because they get infections.... Males are biologically driven to go out and hunt giraffes.”
—Newt Gingrich (b. 1943)
“Taking food alone tends to make one hard and coarse. Those accustomed to it must lead a Spartan life if they are not to go downhill. Hermits have observed, if for only this reason, a frugal diet. For it is only in company that eating is done justice; food must be divided and distributed if it is to be well received.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)
“Nature has not placed us in an inferior rank to men, no more than the females of other animals, where we see no distinction of capacity, though I am persuaded if there was a commonwealth of rational horses ... it would be an established maxim amongst them that a mare could not be taught to pace.”
—Mary Wortley, Lady Montagu (1689–1762)