Is that a ninth leg or are you just hungry to see me?

Arachnida. The very word brings to mind images of sexy spiders scurrying across the squalid surface of the scabrously stained floor of the Larkin building after a Rush pub. As the ringleader retires to his raunchy reward, those spiders of college who have not yet located their mates return to the dancefloor to perform elaborate courtship displays, spin their spinnerets, throb their thoraxes, and sequentially wink all eight eyes in an amorous arachnid approximation of the so-called “wave.”

Like these cockblocked Claudii, the inebriated inhabitants of the Buttery preoccupy themselves with predicating procreation and boast loudly of their silk-protrusional prowess, spinning webs of lies in the hope of attracting suitors and finding a place to secure their egg-sac. These lonesome spiders should take solace in their solitude, for if they were to succeed in their search for a mate they may get eaten!

Yes, the previous 150 words were merely a lead up for me to talk about sexual cannibalism. You, dear reader, are probably angered and horrified that I wasted so many of your eyes’ saccades on this nonsense. Hold onto that feeling. Cherish it. Draw strength from it. Seek solace in its dark embrace, and fuel it with the horrors you are about to read.

Sexual cannibalism is primarily practiced by the females of several arachnid and insect orders, however some gastropods and copepods have been observed to exhibit the behaviour as well. There are several competing hypotheses to explain the evolutionally confusing behaviour, such as the adaptive foraging hypothesis, in which the female weighs the once-laid male’s value as a meal against him as a mate, and subsequently decides to eat him. I am certain that we have all, in starved, post-coital moments of weakness, lamented the distance of the fridge from our beds and at least briefly considered nibbling on the body lying beside us instead. However, I feel like I can safely say we have decided against it. Spiders are not bound by this morality, and therefore routinely elect to ingest their mates.

Another competing hypothesis is that females cannibalize males as a means of mate selection: removing undesirable males from the breeding pool and satisfying their munchies at the same time. I will take this opportunity to express my pleasure at having been born a human and not a spider. Rejection certainly hurts, but I’m sure all of us would rather endure lonely high school dances staring longingly from the sides of the room than be murdered and eaten for the simple crime of not having the moves that drive the mygalomorphs crazy.

The final evolutionary explanation for sexual cannibalism is the mistaken-identity hypothesis, which holds that females cannibalize males who fail to court. That is, the male attempts to display his sexual prowess and fitness as a mate, but the female does not notice, or else is bored by the display, and decides to eat him instead. Here we arrive at the conclusion that humanity is at least pretty okay, and definitely preferable to spiderhood. The only thing that can make walking home alone after a Rush worse is if, after returning to your room to drink a bottle of despair-wine and contemplate life choices, you are knocked to the floor and eaten alive.