Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
More hot spider action
This is Karen’s favorite tarantula mating story, which she learned secondhand at the ArachnoPets forum.
When tarantulas mate, the male needs to have access to her epigynum* in order to do the deed. This orifice is on the undersurface of her abdomen, so he needs to get beneath her in order to inseminate her. Good technique (from the male’s point of view) requires that he also restrain her fangs with special hooks on his forelegs. Restrained fangs are safe fangs.
Once, a male got beneath his intended and began to push her up and back. Everything went swimmingly — he had her fangs hooked, he had great access to her epigynum — so swimmingly that he got a bit overzealous and kept pushing.
I want you to imagine, for a moment, the first step in building a house of cards: one playing card tilted against another . . . so . . . precariously.
He overbalanced the female. She fell on her back, and he fell atop her, and I’m sure they would have had a good, long chuckle over it, told stories about it to the grandkids, maybe even exaggerated a detail here and there, but for one sad fact: the female, surprised by the fall, flashed her fangs, impaling her hapless lover. The rest, as they say, is dinner.**
D.
*Or, in tarantula-speak, ruby fruit jungle.
**A few of you will recognize this story from my NiP. Bare Rump is still recovering from the emotional scars of that fateful encounter.
Ha, he claims that I keep boring people with tarantula trivia. NOW who’s boring people, huh?
She Who Must Be Obeyed
Hi Doug, as much as I hate spiders (sorry) I do find their sex life fascinating! To think us humans worry about the possibilty of rejection – lol, we’ve got it easy ;o)
Well, this male is sitting pretty. I wonder how many times he’ll be able to do the deed. Kind of like Russian roulette.