A solution appears to lie in so-called animal magnetism, or more appropriately, in the effective physical forces that male and female spiders are experiencing on the web's elastic surface.
A ScienceDaily report said the small male golden orb-weaving spider is experiencing a substantial challenge when searching for a mate.
Also indicated in this report is that the male spider is a portion of the massive female's size. However, it needs to carefully get in her web and "approach her without being noticed," as the cannibalistic female spider will kill and eat him once he makes even just a single wrong move on her web.
Now, researchers from the Weizmann Institute of Science have teamed up to learn more about the behavior.
According to Alex Jordan, co-senior author of the study, who also leads the Integrative Behavioral Ecology Lab at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior, the initial concept was to explore the notion that these spiders moving on the web are behaving like electrons that orbit a nucleus, or planets that orbit a star.
From the said initial idea, a research program was developed, resulting in two teams devising a physical model and carrying out experiments in the Paramount rainforest.
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A solution appears to lie in so-called animal magnetism, or more appropriately, in the effective physical forces that male and female spiders are experiencing on the web’s elastic surface.
Compared to a Massive Star
While details of this accurate physics ultimately diverged from both cosmic and atomic levels, the idea model proved helpful.
Explaining the concept, Jordan said, "Imagine electrons" that orbit a nucleus, or "a massive star in space" so huge that it produces its own gravitational field that pulls in objects surrounding it, the gigantic, cannibalistic female can be thought of in a similar way.
He likened the small brave male spiders to tinier planets, comets, or satellites that come close to such an attractive force.
Approaching the star or the female spider at the wrong position risks the male spider getting caught up in the female's attractive pull.
On a cosmic measure, it will lead to a cosmic collision that's vaporizing the planet. For the fearless male, a miscalculated approach would mean falling into a deadly attraction and being prey.
Male Spiders' 'Gravitational Pull' Like the Planets
The study's co-author Sylvia Garza, who spent months as a Master's student in Panama said, working in the rainforest of Panama, has seen extremely passionate males falling victims to the cannibalistic females a lot of time, specifically when they take the wrong move and approach the females quite fast.
While conducting the research, Garza was recording the behavior of both male and female spiders, then, using machine-approaches methods to follow their movement.
Just as the tinier planets have their gravitational pull, the male spiders are attracting one another, at first, approaching the apparent rival.
More so, the male spiders begin repelling each other as they get nearer and nearer, in this manner, behaving much more akin to electrons surrounding a nucleus, ASEM Education specified in a similar report.
According to physicist Amir Haluts, these males' motion is similar to the interactions between particles attracting or repelling one another depending on their distance in-between.
Everything Happening on the Web's Surface
Author Nir Gov, co-senior author of the study from the Weizmann, said they used a model map of the effective physical forces males are experiencing, enabling them to explain their motion on the web, not to mention, contest dynamics of the different sizes of males.
Moreover, as the males revolve around one another, they will ultimately come too close together, colliding with each other in the open combating.
All this, the researches specified in their study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences or PNAS journal, is played on the web's surface, acting as the conduit for the vibrations males are using to communicate. However, it can also alert the female about their presence and result in a deadly attack.
Related information about spiders' search for a mate is shown on BBC's YouTube video below:
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