Miley Cryus may have made twerking (in)famous, but she didn’t originate it. In fact, you could argue no human did: spiders did. Male black widow spiders, that is…
A study from the University of British Columbia reports that black widow spiders do a kind of twerking movement not to offer themselves up as dinner, but to let the female know she’s being approached by a male.
In the spider world, it’s not quite “once bitten, twice shy,” but “once bitten, once dead.”
So it’s a serious matter-of-life-and-death twerk. Not quite what Ms. Cyrus did in her butt-shake that swept the world, but close enough. The Toronto Star reports:
Black widow spiders use jittery abdominal movements not unlike twerking — the hip-shaking dance move made infamous by Cyrus — to navigate the dangerous world of arachnid mating, according to a newly published study from a team of British Columbia researchers.
Specifically, the vibrations from a “twerking” male black widow tell a female perched on her web that she’s being approached by a potential mate, rather than dinner.
“What the male does, it has very subtle abdominal tremulations, so very subtle lateral movements of the abdomen that may be comparable to the twerks, absolutely,” Prof. Gerhard Gries of Simon Fraser University said in an interview Friday.“These very subtle twerks cause these very subtle vibrations of the web, and that is what the female spider will respond to in a very friendly, rather than aggressive, nature.”
For male spiders, mating can be a treacherous endeavour in which an innocent attempt at courtship can end with — and this is the scientific term — sexual cannibalism.
Cannibalism is a common danger facing male spiders attempting to approach females, since most spiders are predatory and extremely aggressive. One wrong move can be fatal.
Indeed, National Geographic notes that female black widows will eat virtually anything that moves within their turf. Another trait similar to some humans (my Aunt Edna, for example.)
Female black widow spiders are not the friendliest mates, even according to spider standards: They will pretty much eat anything moving on their web, prey or spider. So it pays to clearly identify yourself as a mate, not a morsel.
Males do this by jerking the female’s web, transmitting friendly vibrations that give the female a simple message: “Please don’t eat me! I’m here to mate.” (Read about 7 other animals that use vibrations to communicate.)
This is a smart move, since the female’s web “functions as an extension of the spider’s exquisitely tuned sensory system, allowing her to very quickly detect and respond to prey coming into contact with her silk,” said study co-author Catherine Scott, also at Simon Fraser.
So by making movements on the web that are unlike those of a fly or cricket, the male has figured out a lifesaving communication strategy.
Here’s a video about black widow spider mating:
And here’s the human version of the spider movement:
graphic via shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.