When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. Sex can be dangerous, even deadly if your partner has plans to eat you. When the male orb-web ...

Nephilengys malabarensis male and female showing extreme sexual dimorphism where the much smaller male is resting on the female’s abdomen after escaping from female cannibalism via emasculation during ...

The phrase 'eunuch' has derogatory connotations for us humans - but it is a different matter for spiders. The male nephilengys malabarensis spider loses its spider penis when it has sex with a female, ...

Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write about biodiversity and the hidden quirks of the natural world. Whether it’s for pleasure or proliferation, most animals ...

If your partner is likely to devour you after sex, snapping off your genitals inside her might seem a reasonable reproductive strategy. This game plan is used by males of the orb-web spider ...

Sexual cannibalism is a remarkably common mating habit among insects and arachnids — perhaps most famously, black widow spiders and preying mantises devour males after mating with them. There are a ...