Flirty Female Spiders Use Silk to Capture a Male's Interest
When male wolf spiders don't seem that interested in a female wolf spider, she ups her game by releasing more pheromone-rich silk.
The seemingly calm cornfields of North America brim with courtship and seduction, but people rarely notice it. That's because the players are hairy wolf spiders that are more often squashed than studied.
But new research suggests we're missing out on learning about the dramatic lives of spiders. In addition to cannibalism, ambushes, and the devouring of young, the study finds that when it comes to love, female wolf spiders take things into their own hands.
The arachnids actively seduce males using their silk, a rarely observed phenomenon in the spider world, scientists reported this month in the journal Ethology.
Many species of wolf spiders are common throughout streams, forests, and agricultural fields like soybean farms in the
