【英语时差8,16】狼蜘蛛选择交配对象

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Ya?l: My cousin is always falling for these obnoxious¹, awful men who are just like her father. You'd think she'd learn not to make the same mistake her mother made.

Don: Well, you know what they say. A woman will marry the man who reminds her of her father, and a man will marry a woman who reminds him of his mother.

Y: Yeah, yeah. I just think that's so silly. Humans must be the silliest animals on the planet.

D: Actually, we're hardly the only animals to choose mates based on our early social interactions. In fact, though worlds away from us as a species, some female wolf spiders also make their mating choices on the basis of familiarity. Male wolf spiders run the gamut² in physical appearance. They can vary in color and in hairiness. What's interesting is that there isn't a general preferred look among females, but instead, females prefer males who look like males they encountered when they were young and sexually immature³. In fact, some female wolf spiders prefer familiarity to the extent that they will often eat a male suitor that doesn't fit that profile. The wider her range of familiarity with different looking males, the more discriminating⁴ a female is, and thus more likely to devour⁵ a male who looks unfamiliar⁶. The influence social experience has on the female wolf spider's mating choice is almost unheard of among invertebrates⁷. This spider challenges what we thought we knew about arachnids and invertebrates.

Y: I guess it also challenges my theory that humans are the silliest animals on the planet. If we are silly, we're not alone.  

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