During mating, male redback spiders flip their own bodies around and offer up their abdomen to the female’s fangs, letting themselves be eaten right there. After Nazology published an article on this behavior, 5ch reacted with everything from astonishment at research showing that cannibalized males have a median mating duration of 25 minutes versus just 11 minutes for males that aren’t eaten, to a personal account of encountering one in a Kawasaki apartment.
Posts also focused on explaining the logic behind why males “choose” to be eaten, with comments like “the odds of meeting another female if you flee are low” and “getting eaten means longer mating time, which works in your favor.”
The Redback Spider’s Bizarre “Eaten by the Female After Mating” Behavior Turns Out to Be Genetically Surprisingly Simple
Living things generally try to flee when danger approaches.
But the male Australian redback spider (Latrodectus hasselti) does the opposite: during mating, it flips its own body around, offers its abdomen to the female’s fangs, and afterward simply lets itself be eaten by her.
>>2
That's only Japanese mantises
Apparently Chinese mantises have the male and female fight it out, and the male sometimes wins
3Anonymous2026/08/16(日) 20:31:21.94ID:GMqS9fDj
By getting eaten, the male actually takes over the female's mind, you know
4Anonymous2026/08/16(日) 20:33:56.99ID:NQTHGS4U
Madame Mantis
5Anonymous2026/08/16(日) 20:34:41.90ID:eNvB/yuo
What even is this?
Did they evolve this way to boost genetic diversity instead of just passing on the same genes?
6Anonymous2026/08/16(日) 20:35:25.10ID:x4fZ2929
Poor males, that's just too sad
7Anonymous2026/08/16(日) 20:38:12.34ID:K1mTr7aL
Mantises can apparently get away if they play it right (though it seems to cost them some eggs)
Is it 100% for these spiders, though?
Wish they could slowly merge together like anglerfish do lol
9Anonymous2026/08/16(日) 21:46:48.09ID:ikTyxLMJ
If I'm getting eaten after sex, it'd better be with someone I'm really into
But yeah, right when the post-nut clarity hits and you realize you're being eaten, you'd probably snap out of it and scream
32Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 09:47:31.24ID:gfZF6UfU
>>9
Guess the ones who felt that way got weeded out by natural selection
10Anonymous2026/08/16(日) 21:57:48.91ID:X4ks3ETC
Humans are kind of the same
You get 'eaten' by your wife after marriage
11Anonymous2026/08/16(日) 22:50:35.53ID:aB/rE3+J
So a chakra somersault counts as mating behavior too…
12Anonymous2026/08/16(日) 22:55:19.68ID:aB/rE3+J
Wait, these things actually live in Japan, so you can watch them in person?
13Anonymous2026/08/16(日) 22:58:48.91ID:Dkdd/BXl
Reminds me of when I lived in Kawasaki
One showed up in my room
16Anonymous2026/08/16(日) 23:21:56.28ID:o/5QEtpm
>>13
There was a neighborhood flyer going around like "Report any redback spider sightings!"
Turns out it was your house lol
14Anonymous2026/08/16(日) 23:13:28.56ID:uxJqGb8L
Yeah, I'm good staying a virgin
15Anonymous2026/08/16(日) 23:20:46.47ID:o/5QEtpm
A society made up of nothing but virgins… (gulp)
17Anonymous2026/08/16(日) 23:35:04.64ID:c+sXk/9F
> 67% of females who ate their first mate rejected a second male, compared to just 4% of females who didn't eat him. (It's not well understood why this happens)
Female redback spider: "I loved him so much I just had to eat him…"
19Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 02:20:08.84ID:PNp8HzLM
Mantises just react to anything that moves
If you happen to be there when they hatch, they'll even eat their own siblings
20Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 02:51:58.30ID:j20bydMa
"gets eatne" (sic)
Come on, the source site should proofread this stuff before publishing
21Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 03:21:59.55ID:98gJn8hV
>>18
Husbands are just ATMs
That's the law of nature
23Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 05:09:59.25ID:mKaTL5/g
> Past field studies found that over 80% of male redback spiders die before ever finding a mate, and males are estimated to get less than one mating opportunity per lifetime on average.
That's literally you guys
25Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 07:13:23.75ID:7sqYnUdJ
>> According to the observations, the median mating duration for cannibalized males was 25 minutes, versus 11 minutes when there was no cannibalism.
26Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 07:14:16.74ID:7sqYnUdJ
>> Even during courtship before mating, males perform a behavior called "abdominal contraction," tightly constricting the middle of their abdomen.
>> During mating, the female mainly bites the part of the abdomen behind this constriction. Past experiments confirmed that males given an artificial wound in that same spot behind the constriction survived longer.
27Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 07:14:59.94ID:7sqYnUdJ
>> Female redback spiders have two separate organs for storing sperm, and males mate in two sessions so they can deliver sperm into both.
29Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 07:51:08.37ID:Ib29J4bO
Humans are kind of getting 'eaten' too, in a way
In the animal kingdom it's nutrients, in human society it's money — either way, women are devouring value out of men
30Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 09:22:43.15ID:Y6K/ZRyc
It's because it raises the odds of the offspring surviving, right?
That's just obvious
Insects don't raise or teach their young, so once a male's passed on his genes he's useless anyway
So him becoming nutrition is just a net plus for the species' survival
31Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 09:46:44.57ID:cx4iyurq
Male mantises let the female eat them while they mate.
That footage of one still desperately mating even after losing its head was wild.
33Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 10:09:24.28ID:NX1sb08I
With other animals,
the male has to go off and "fight" or protect the family after mating
Redback spiders probably don't have to bother with any of that
35Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 10:51:30.44ID:l5kABDXK
> the male has to go off and fight or protect the family after mating
I don't get what you're saying, is that even Japanese?
36Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 10:55:42.14ID:wZHDjwq6
Then there's the sac spider that lets its own babies eat her body,
and the hoopoe, which lays extra eggs just to feed its earlier-hatched chicks
nature is terrifying
38Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 15:05:39.36ID:qszeux7p
If you're doomed to be eaten by something eventually anyway, better it's the female carrying your genes than some random predator
39Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 15:07:46.01ID:LRoGnOZ7
Sounds like it could be the plot of a doujin manga lol
43Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 19:49:06.14ID:n/1IjGpu
Was telling myself 'no way I'm looking at the images in this thread' lol, then the thumbnail got me lol
44Anonymous2026/08/17(月) 22:35:02.10ID:Hx+epQn+
She eats him herself and then gets to play the grieving 'widow'? Come on.
47Anonymous2026/08/18(火) 00:33:43.70ID:jDBlI1S3
There was a time when a sighting of these was national news
but now they're just everywhere, and you don't even need to report it anymore
49Anonymous2026/08/18(火) 13:36:00.35ID:mw1gAlnW
The odds of finding another female if you flee are low
Getting eaten extends mating time, which works in your favor
Getting eaten raises the odds the female rejects the next male
It becomes nutrition for the kids
Yeah, I'd pick getting eaten too
50Anonymous2026/08/18(火) 20:43:09.38ID:KXb9FD0V
Personally, I'd choose staying alive and safe over leaving offspring behind.
51Anonymous2026/08/18(火) 21:25:59.20ID:5fpbne11
They're going to die soon anyway, so they'd rather die for the sake of their offspring
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