eli5- Why do insects and arachnids like a praying mantis and spiders kill the one they mate with?
In: 499
Nature is not about survival of the INDIVIDUAL. It’s about survival of the SPECIES. And, to be really clear, it’s about whatever patterns didn’t sufficiently harm “survival of the species” to cause that species to be unsuccessful.
In these two cases, what has worked *sufficiently well to ensure further generations* is when the female eats the male of that species after mating. It gives the female a ton of super convenient instant calories and nutrients that can go into the development of her eggs.
The male? Well, yeah, he could have mated with another female later… but it was not necessary as a pattern for the entire species’ survival that a single male mates multiple times.
So it might be SUPER suboptimal for the male, and it might be SOMEWHAT suboptimal for the species, but it was not suboptimal enough for that species to be unsuccessful and go extinct.
Dudes becoming lunch just didn’t harm things enough to prevent dudes from becoming lunch.
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