April 25 (UPI) -- A species of male spiders is ditching its cannibalistic female counterparts after sex, to avoid being dined on alive.
The orb-weaving male spiders use their two front legs to launch themselves to safety as soon as they've mated, according to research published Monday in Current Biology.
The lead author of the study wrote he noticed the tiny males were bouncing away after mating with the larger females, using energy stored in their front leg joints.
"Imagine a man with a height of 1.8 meters catapulting himself 530 meters in one second. That's what these male spiders do," said Shichang Zhang, a behavioral ecologist at China's Hubei University. That equates to someone just under 6 feet launching themselves one-third of a mile.
Researchers discovered the male spiders folded their front legs against the female and catapulted off right after mating. The action is so fast it took a high-speed, high-resolution video to catch the action. Analysis of the high-speed videos show the spiders reaching speeds of 2.9 feet per second, which translates to almost 60 mph.
Orb spiders don't have venom to kill their prey, so females resort to mummifying their male partners by wrapping them in 450 feet of silk that either suffocates or crushes them to death.
The study's findings suggest the male spiders' catapulting behavior evolved over time to avoid the crushing death and sexual cannibalism. The study found the "bounciest males" father more spiderlings.
