A team of biologists has discovered that
male spiders spy on their rivals during courtship ceremonies, so
they can mimic and pinch their most successful dance moves.
The researchers put male wolf spiders (Schizocosa ocreata) in
front of tiny television sets and made them watch videos of other
males perform a sexy, leg-tapping mating dance. The test spiders
copied the on-screen males, adjusting the rate of leg-tapping to
match and even outperform their rivals.
The spiders used in this study were collected from the field.
Naive, lab-raised spiders who weren't exposed to male courtship toward females
didn't understand the dance and the results were inconclusive. But
spiders from the field, who knew what the leg-tapping was all
about, behaved as if their on-screen rival was courting a nearby
"Eavesdropping on the communication of others is widespread
among animals and often serves as a means of obtaining
information," said David Clark, a professor of biology at Alma
College and lead author of the study.
"For example, studies of birds, mammals and fish have shown that male bystanders observing male-male
contests can learn about the strengths of potential opponents,
while female observers may copy the mate choices of others,"
"This 'signal matching' behaviour has only been seen before in
vertebrate animals like birds or fish, and suggests that
invertebrates like spiders may have more sophisticated behaviors
than previously known," explains George Uetz, a professor of
biological sciences at the University of Cincinnati and the study's
"The closer we look at spiders, the more complex
we see they are -- their capacity for learning, memory and
decision-making is far greater than we ever would have thought,"