If your partner is likely to devour you after sex, snapping off your genitals inside her might seem a reasonable reproductive strategy. This game plan is used by males of the orb-web spider Nephilengys malabarensis and, it turns out, continues to work in their favour, regardless of whether they survive the encounter.

Thus begins my new piece for Nature News. Honestly, I can’t believe they let me keep the lede. Here’s more:

Daiqin Li at the National University of Singapore and his colleagues studied the species and found that after the male breaks away his severed organ continues to pump sperm into the female. This allows him to fertilize her remotely, while denying entry to other males. Even though the male