Watch A Jumping Spider Dance To Impress A Prospective Mate And Name A Newly Discovered Species
“So the female wants to say no but he puts it in big bright letters 'new and improved.’ He’s basically finding loopholes in her sensory system.”
—University of British Columbia zoologist Wayne Madison explains the increasingly complex mating dance of the male jumping spider to The Last Word On Nothing's Anne Casselman. Madison discovered a whole new species of jumping spider in Ecuador, and you can help name it!
"The spider is a small adult male, about 5mm long. Like all jumping spiders, he has four big eyes on the front of his face, and four smaller eyes on top. He's mostly reddish brown except for his face, which has a big white band, and his jaws have striking diagonal yellowish stripes. No other known jumping spider has a face quite like this one."
The first part of the name will be "Lapsias" (for some scientific reason that we have no control over.) But the second part can be one or two words long, and we, the people, can submit suggestions. I can't decide between "Lapsias Lee Roth"
Or "Lapsias Apache"
Or "Lapsias Pointer Sister"
Or "Lapsias Mack Daddy" (Or "Lapsias Daddy Mack")
Or "Lapsias Everlast"
Your enjoyment of The Dancing Spider video will be greatly increased if you play Michael Jackson's 'Billy Jean' along to it.
Lapsias doloridomesticus (House of Pain lapsiine).
Jack Flash! name the fucker Jack Flash!
(sorry I've had a lot of coffee today).
@HiredGoons It's all right (now.)
I need to know if, at the end of his little dance, did he become her mate or her lunch? 'Cause I'm totally trying this if the former.
It's a shame they've left out the audio which reveals the true identity of the Jam of the Summer 2011.
You call that a "dance?" He's doing quotey fingers at her. Maybe it's an arachnid voguing technique. But I would do a much better job of it. If I were a spider.
@BadUncle Those aren't quotey fingers, those are "jazz hands."
@Dave Bry And this is a hetero mating dance?
@BadUncle Actually the male's forelegs serve as prehensile penises – they eject sperm from their cloaca onto them and then effectively finger the female (quite violently in fact) into pregnancy. So the dance is more like the "dick slang" – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVx80aVxsm0&feature=player_embedded
PS You're welcome
@BadUncle Wow, I once almost got pregnant from something like that happening!
So now all of these songs are stuck in my head and playing all at once. I think House of Pain is winning though. Thanks!
Dave, this is completely 100 percent f'ing brilliant! I don't even know where to start with how brilliant it is.
"Humping Spider"
Duh.
When I was a kid I took a spider biology course at the local natural history museum. They put two jumping spiders in a petri dish on an overhead projector and we got to see the mating dance in real time. The female was decidedly unimpressed. It was really cool.
…nothing on the Peacock Spider
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GgAbyYDFeg
My mind is telling me no…..but my body…my body's telling me yeeeeees!