Female praying mantis eats the male after sex to become more fertile

Conjugal male sacrifice helps to propagate their genes.



If you think you have peculiar sexual habits, it is because they do not know the praying mantis. The female of this curious insect takes the concept of "sexual predator" to another level: it often literally eat your partner after intercourse. A new survey, conducted by biologists William Brown of New York University, and Katherine Barry, Macquarie University, Australia, just understand why. The researchers found that females who eat the partners lay on average 88 eggs - 50 more than those who do not eat.

Cannibalism post coitum the praying mantis is not a general rule: something like 72% of males escape alive. What Brown and Barry was shown that males who viewed dines greatly increase the number of descendants - as leave more eggs. They lose their lives, but propagate the genes.

It was already known that females use the material ejaculated by the male to produce eggs. What the new research has shown is that when cannibalism occurs, eggs are produced not only sperm but with the entire body of the deceased. So production increases both.

The research was very hefty. Scientists marked proteins of praying mantis male with a radioactive substance and then measured the radioactivity of the resulting eggs. So could prove without a doubt that much of the martyrs of the sexual body material ended up in the eggs.