“The Birds And The Bees”

How many times have you heard about safe sex? Hundreds, thousands, or perhaps millions of times? Constantly, parents are always warning us about the dangers of having sex; pregnancy, STDs, infections, and so forth, but they always fail to mention one important aspect: being eaten. One day you are a nice piece of booty and the next day you are breakfast, lunch, or dinner, take your pick.

In a study, Jonathan Lelito and William Brown studied the male praying mantises’ behavior by varying the risk of cannibalism and recording the results of the behavior accordingly. Studies have concluded that the hungry females in many cases choose a decent meal over mating. To say the very least, these females are not scared as they lead a head- on attack allowing them to use her front legs.

Despite the stereotypical “dumb” and “irrational” males contained within our society, male praying mantises are a little wiser when they approach a female that could potentially eat them. When nearing a female praying mantis and with death lurking; studies have shown they slow their approach, begin to do courtship behavior more often, and mount from a further distance avoiding danger at all costs. These two sexes have issues and as Brown thus said, “this is an example of extreme conflict between the sexes.” May the better one win; of course, it will be us females.

Copulation for praying mantises lasted on an average of six hours and on average sexual cannibalism occurred five to thirty- one percent of the time. Female praying mantises eat their sexual partner as a means of survival, say she has not eaten something in a while; you got to do what you got to do. Also, females are known to eat the males because she can gain a boost of energy to produce her eggs, even though many people think she is just flat out mean and with some of the females I have seen; this is probably true too. We are mean and yell at men, sometimes more often than not. When males are out of control a female praying mantis will bite off his head, literally bite off his head and the male will continue to reproduce waiting, just waiting to be eaten. That’s all he can do. These types of species give others a bad name. (2)

Sexual cannibalism seems uncommon, but actually about thirty different animal species in all orders of arachnids and in three orders of insects partake in this type of activity; such as a redback, orweb, and black widow. Not only are us females looking to kill the other sex, but in many cases men “try” to feed on us females in sexual cannibalism. Victims, that what the poor men are that try to have sex with females.

Next time you dare to have sex, question whether you may be the next victim of sexual cannibalism and maybe, just maybe, you will think about sex twice. The stupid male praying mantises are somewhat aware of the situation of possibly being eating, yet many times like boys tend to do, they let their hormones take over; costing them in the end something as valuable as life. Be careful of us females; you just never know…

Resources:
1) http://www.sfu.ca/~msr/Papers/BISC/mantis.html
2) http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/biology/b103/f02/web1/mdoughty.html

Picture Resource: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/05/science/05cann.html?ex=1315108800&en=c90525a93ea63f7f&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

CMB (9)