Funnel-web males send knockouts in air
By Susan Milius
Male funnel-web spiders seem to be wafting some kind of knockout gas toward the females they court–a tricky gambit since a laboratory test shows the substance can also knock out the male.
Since there’s a fine line between a female’s next mate and her next meal, spider courtship requires precise diplomacy, explains Fred D. Singer of Radford University in Virginia. The funnel-web spider, Agelenopsis aperta, sidesteps this problem. During courtship, the female curls into a harmless cataleptic state for at least several hours, sometimes days, enabling a male to mate without being eaten.