A University of Toronto grad student and researcher treated her nearly 2,000 Twitter followers to a live tweet-athon of spider-sex.
Catherine Scott, or @Cataranea as she goes by on Twitter, tweets almost exclusively about the eight-legged arachnids. Scott’s twitter is filled with tons of photos, and facts about spiders and if the sight of a spider is enough to send you into frenzy, steer clear. Last Friday night Scott live-tweeted an experiment she was conducting on the courtship, and mating of black widow spiders. Scott’s tweets were just as informative as they were entertaining.
Scott was also happy to answer questions about spider misconceptions, and surprisingly, there were quite a few. Apparently, it is rare for western black widows to kill and eat the male after mating. But back to the spider sex, Scott set up three pairs of black widow spiders in mating arenas to conduct the experiment. She assured her followers that the females were well fed, and that the male spiders were not in any danger. Scott was able to keep her followers on the edge of their seats by using the spider’s speed to increase the anticipation. As her followers learned, spiders like to take it slow…extremely slow. Over the next few hours Scott tweeted updates that were mostly about the male spiders moving a little, and then taking a rest. Through the experiment, Male 1 seemed to be making the most moves towards his female partner.
After one death (RIP male 4), and five and a half hours, Scott signed off and told her followers she had set cameras up to record the rest of the experiment. After gaining new followers from her experiment, Catherine will no doubt keep us up to date with all the gossip in the mating arenas.
If you want to keep up with Catherine’s experiments, or you just want to learn some more about spiders you can check out her website spiderbytes.org, or follower her on Twitter @Cataranea.
